Writing Guidelines
Prof. David Thorburn

Citations, footnotes
There are many accepted formats for citations and footnotes. I prefer the following simple principles.

Italicize (or underline) titles of books, plays or feature films; use quotation marks to indicate titles of poems, stories or articles. Novellas or long stories that have been published in individual bindings are italicized as if they were full-length texts. So: Conrad's short story "Youth" is placed in quotation marks as is Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," but Heart of Darkness (a novella), Lord Jim (a novel) and Modern Times (a feature film) are italicized.

Use parenthetic citations instead of footnotes wherever possible. For instance, in citing quoted passages from the primary text under discussion, the first reference should include full title, place and date of publication, and a page citation; thereafter, only the page citation is necessary. Eg: (Heart of Darkness, London, 1898, p. 6). In the next citation: (p. 8). Note that the period concluding the sentence goes outside the parenthesis citing the page number(s).

An alternative to this practice: the first reference to the text can be footnoted, which note can include the remark "Subsequent parenthetic references are to this edition."

If you cite secondary works in footnotes, use the following format: David Thorburn, Conrad's Romanticism (New Haven, 1974), p. 17. Note that publisher is not required.

MOST IMPORTANT: Do not repeat information unnecessarily. For example, if your text reads "As David Thorburn suggests, .....," then the footnote should not repeat the author's name; if you also mention the book title in your text, then the footnote should include only the place and date of publication and the page number.

Formatting quotations
When quoting material, integrate the quoted passage into the body of your own text using quotation marks if the passage is not longer than four lines. If the passage is longer than four lines, indent an extra five spaces left and right, forgo the quotation marks, and use single spacing.

Use an ellipsis (three spaced dots) to indicate omitted material. If the omission begins after a complete sentence, retain the original period and then introduce the ellipsis.

Use square brackets [ ] to indicate your additions or changes in the original material.

Examples below.

 

Quoted passage integrated into your text:

          The Shadow Line repeatedly dramatizes scenes of tense conversation

and even verbal coercion between the young protagonist and a series of older

figures. As David Thorburn writes, "Though all his people are orphans, Conrad

remains one of the great portrayers of the anguished impotence of

fatherhood. One of his defining subjects is maturity's useless generosity

toward the young."¹

Extended quotation, separated by indentation from your text:

        George Eliot's power to create and sustain an intimate communion with

her readers, her sad stringent awareness of how society shapes and

constrains us, her respect for the ordinary heroism of daily life, her moral

wisdom and generosity -- all this is crystalized in the final paragraphs of

her greatest novel:

        Certainly those determining acts of . . . [Dorothea's] life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. . . .
        Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature . . . spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.²

 

1.  Conrad's Romanticism (New Haven, 1974), p. 45.
2.  Middlemarch, ed. Gordon Haight (Boston, 1956), pp. 612-13.
  First published 1871-72.