Citing sources

Nixy

Nixy

Elimi-nistrator
Staff member
OK, i know if you're quoting someone elses work you then have to cite it, I use in text citations. What if you are requoting something someone quoted in their work? Do you cite the original author directly or the author if the piece you saw it in or both?
 
I don't have one :(

I am an engineering student. I don't normally do such things as write essays. :( This is for my social science elective course. :(

i wish I could write more essays and have a handbook :(
 
I believe you just quote the person you are quoting from, even if he quoted someone else. Or, you could make a note and cite both. I would do the latter... I'm paranoid to give credit where due.
 
if you are quotating only the part belonging to the first author, you should only say you extracted it from him.

Or at least that's what i do.
 
the way i did it in my thesis was like this:

William Lam was also interested in this territory of light and science in his book, Perception and Lighting as Formgivers for Architecture*footnote here of publication in general*. The main thrust is that of perception and its role in defining light in spaces, arguing that the regulatory requirements for lighting have been over-engineered and geared toward high illuminances, often at the expense of the quality of space:

“...we discovered that, when we switched over from indirect lighting with very low levels to direct lighting with the new fluorescent tube and increased light levels by three times perhap , we did not really change or improve vision at all. Although the light went up by three, the contrast, generally speaking, went down…” *footnote here with page reference*

Lam proposes an approach to lighting from perception and adaptation, identifying expectation and combinations of direct and diffuse light as additional factors in design of spaces. He also advocates a ‘rifle’ approach to lighting that is space specific, as opposed the ‘shotgun’ approach that blanket lights entire spaces.


the italicised section of quote is set single spaced [as opposed to the 1.5spcae body text] and fotnote/endnote referenced. the other way of doing it is to add a short reference at the end of the quote, un-italicised, like this:

...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, lam, new york, 1981. ppxx-xx.

to do that you usually have to have a full title of the book, as i have in the text above, as a footnote somewhere so the reader knows where to refer to. it depends on the referencing system you use [harvard etc] but the way i did it worked fine for my masters.

hope that's of some help :)
 
Ris: I was wondering what I cite when the book I am using as reference has quoted a different person and footnoted it. If I want to then use the same quote do I quote it from the author of the book and then when a person looks it up they will kow it from someone else or from the person he took it from directly?
 
reference the original quote to the initial source directly i think, i did it in a couple of references i think. you could add 'from source 'xxx' in the footnote if you wish, i think it would be acceptable if the original source tect is unavailable.
 
ris said:
reference the original quote to the initial source directly i think, i did it in a couple of references i think. you could add 'from source 'xxx' in the footnote if you wish, i think it would be acceptable if the original source tect is unavailable.
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MLA does not have footnotes.

You can check it here: http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/

It appears you only list the author you are quoting from, not who he is quoting from.
 
Thank You LL. That was exactly what I was looking for. My roomie said the same thing so I am going with that.

Actually, we are using MLA but our TA said we could use footnotes or in text :shrug:

I have always used in text so that is what I am going with.

Thank You everyone! :hug:
 
that's mla, there are plenty of other systems that are suitable and acceptable. i generally subscribe to the 'better to have more information than necessary than too little' especially in written thesis work.
 
cool nix, as long as you are consistent then you should be fine.

sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick earlier, suffering 1am brainfade
 
Sorry, I should have specified in the first post that I am using MLA. :blush:
 
ris said:
that's mla, there are plenty of other systems that are suitable and acceptable. i generally subscribe to the 'better to have more information than necessary than too little' especially in written thesis work.
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If you don't use MLA in a paper here, at Waterloo, you get a 0 on your paper. Same with high school, and Guelph University. I don't write my papers in anything but MLA just because universities in this area want it in MLA. I'm unsure of McMaster though.
 
MLA for this social science course.

Don't know about any other courses or faculties cause I haven't written any papers for any other courses! :shrug:
 
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