The History Department's Style Guide
Our faculty study and teach a variety of fields in North American, European and World History. We have expertise in Canadian political and social history, modern and early modern European and British history, the Middle Ages, the colonial and antebellum United States, the Second World War and its aftermath, the history of genocide and war crimes trials, Russian/Soviet history, 20th century International history, and more!
The Seminar Experience at Nipissing University
Our students attend two hours of lecture and one hour of seminar per week. During the small weekly seminars students critically discuss the course material which includes historical documents. The seminar instructors also offer skills training to help students master university-level essay writing. The seminars are designed to help students get comfortable with expressing their ideas.
About the History Style Guide
The standard style and reference guide that students should use while writing their essays.
(Source: Department of History at Wright State University)
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Notes
Footnotes (or endnotes) are used to acknowledge borrowing from another writer's work. You should cite a work when you quote from it or when you derive facts or ideas from it, even if you have summarized or paraphrased the information. Only common knowledge, which is available in a number of sources, need not be acknowledged (i.e., the dates of the Civil War). The following sections list the information that must be included in the first and subsequent citations of a work. Examples follow.
First citation of a book:
- Full name of author(s) or editor(s)
- Full title of work, underlined or italicized
- City of publication, name of publisher, and date of publication
(Note: well-known cities do not need to be followed by state names, and "Inc.," "Co.," and other such abbreviations may be dropped from publishers' names.) - Page number(s) cited
Example:
1. Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 5-9.
First citation of an article in an edited book:
- Full name of author(s)
- Full title of article, in quotation marks
- Full title of book, underlined or italicized
- Full name of editor
- Publication information and page number(s) as above
Example:
2. Catherine Jones, "The English Mystic: Julian of Norwich," in Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 279-80.
First citation of an article in a journal:
- Full name of author(s)
- Full title of article, in quotation marks
- Full title of journal, underlined or italicized
- Volume number and issue number, in Arabic numerals
- Year of publication (month optional; if you use it you do not need the issue number), in parentheses
- Page number(s) cited
Example:
3. Charles Hirschman, "The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and Racial Ideology," Sociological Forum 1, no. 2 (1986): 42.
Subsequent citations
Offer two choices:
- Ibid. ("the same" as footnote directly above. Never use ibid. if the previous note refers to more than one work.)
- Short form: author's last name, short title, page (or simply author's last name, page).
Examples:
4. Craig, Prussian Army, 28.
5. Jones, "The English Mystic," 282.
Edition other than the first and work in a series:
6. Isaac Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 3rd ed., The Temple Library (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 285.
Newspaper article:
7. Seth Taylor, "Local Residents React to Clinton Health Plan," Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, 7 May 1994, sec. A, regional edition.
Book Review:
8. R. Kent Newmyer, review of 1787: The Grand Convention, by Clinton Rossiter, Journal of American History 53 (December 1966): 591-92.
Bibliography
The bibliography provides a list of the sources used in preparing a paper. Include all works cited in your notes, as well as works you consulted but did not cite. List works alphabetically by authors' last names. The same information is present in a bibliographic entry as in a note, with a few exceptions noted below. However, the information is arranged, capitalized, and punctuated differently.
Book:
Craig, Gordon A. The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945. London: Oxford University Press, 1955.
Article in an edited book:
Jones, Catherine. "The English Mystic: Julian of Norwich." In Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, 269-96. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.
(Note: The pages on which the article begins and ends are included. This is optional.)
Journal article:
Hirschman, Charles. "The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and Racial Ideology." Sociological Forum 1, no. 2 (1986): 33-61.
(Note: The pages on which the article begins and ends are included. This is notoptional.)
Edition other than the first and work in a series:
Husik, Isaac. A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy. 3rd ed. The Temple Library. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
Newspaper article:
Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, 1 May-5 June 1994.
(Note: You don't have to list newspaper articles separately. Just provide the name of the paper and the dates of the issues you consulted.)
Book Review:
Newmyer, R. Kent. Review of 1787: The Grand Convention, by Clinton Rossiter. Journal of American History 53 (December 1966): 591-92.
For more detailed information on citing sources, including public documents, film, unpublished works, and electronic sources, see Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), or Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997).
More Resources
The Canadian Historical Association / La Société historique du Canada
Founded in 1922, the Canadian Historical Association / La Société historique du Canada is a bilingual not-for-profit and charitable association devoted to fostering the scholarly study and communication of history in Canada. It is the largest of its kind in the country.
The Association seeks to encourage the integration of historical knowledge and perspectives in both the scholarly and public spheres, to ensure the accessibility of historical resources, and to defend the rights and freedoms of professional and emerging historians in the pursuit of historical inquiry.