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[conjugate]

When writing my dissertation, I was a bit surprised to find out about Turabian, since I am most familiar with disciplines that are pretty concerned with their citation styles. I can only name MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian, but I assume there are others as well.

Shows how much I know; I thought Turabian was Chicago.  

In looking over a recent issue of one publication, I find inconsistencies centered around the style I outlined above; one of these omits the author's name(s?) entirely (unless the author's name is a blank space).  Some italicize journal names and some don't; some capitalize non-proper nouns within titles, and some don't; one article capitalizes "And" in one reference and not in another.

I am struck by, and amused at, a referenced article entitled "The necessary conditions for t-designs are sufficient for something," but presumably I'd have to find a copy of the article to find out what.

On edit, I realize that I meant to post an on-topic e-mail from a student.

i am sorry that i missed Tuesday and Thursday of last week. i also realize that i missed the test on Thursday and i wanted to know when i can make that up. i have been very sick dealing with the flu. i am better now and i will be in class tomorrow. i looked at the syllabus and i have noticed that you are open at 11. i can't do anything at 11. anytime after 12 i can. please let me know when you can let me make that test up. thank you                                                                                                                           

Student noticed that I'm "open" at 11, and feels obliged to tell me this.  But student admits that this information is of no use.  Okay, fine.

[secretweapon]

i am sorry that i missed Tuesday and Thursday of last week. i also realize that i missed the test on Thursday and i wanted to know when i can make that up. i have been very sick dealing with the flu. i am better now and i will be in class tomorrow. i looked at the syllabus and i have noticed that you are open at 11. i can't do anything at 11. anytime after 12 i can. please let me know when you can let me make that test up. thank you                                                                                                                           

Student noticed that I'm "open" at 11, and feels obliged to tell me this.  But student admits that this information is of no use.  Okay, fine.

'Dear Student,
I can't fully respond to your email because I close in two minutes.
Bye!'

[elsie]

IIRC, Turabian is the student version of Chicago style.  MLA publishes a student version of their style manual as well. In fact, I seem to remember that Kate Turabian was the University of Chicago  thesis checker, but I don't know for sure.

[smithfieldmuse]

Dr. Muse,
I have missed a few classes because of personal reasons.  I play for the baseball team and my coaches are requiring me to bring a note from my professors telling how I can raise my average in each class.

Yeah.  I'll get right on that.  Also, "a few classes" = student has been to class TWICE. 

Also, if the coaches really told him that, they can bite me.

[prof_smartypants]

Dr. Muse,
I have missed a few classes because of personal reasons.  I play for the baseball team and my coaches are requiring me to bring a note from my professors telling how I can raise my average in each class.

Yeah.  I'll get right on that.  Also, "a few classes" = student has been to class TWICE. 

Also, if the coaches really told him that, they can bite me.

Dear Coach,

Student can raise his average by fulfilling the requirements laid out in the syllabus.

Sincerely,
Dr. Muse

[smithfieldmuse]

Dr. Muse,
I have missed a few classes because of personal reasons.  I play for the baseball team and my coaches are requiring me to bring a note from my professors telling how I can raise my average in each class.

Yeah.  I'll get right on that.  Also, "a few classes" = student has been to class TWICE. 

Also, if the coaches really told him that, they can bite me.

Dear Coach,

Student can raise his average by fulfilling the requirements laid out in the syllabus.

Sincerely,
Dr. Muse

Or,

Dear Coach,

PLEASE SEE THE SYLLABUS.

Ha ha ha ha!

[galactic_hedgehog]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

See, I learned early on that in Math, many journals cite like this:

In [1], the authors establish Equation 3 for the special case of....  Jones and Smith use this approach to further narrow the bounds in [2]....

Then the bibliography lists the references in alphabetical order by author, and chronologically for articles with the same author-set:

[1] Him, Me-and, A Special Case of Equation 3, J. Abstract Nonsense 4 (1996), pp. 123-129.

[2] Jones, A. and Smith, B, Further Narrowing a Bound, J. Pointless Trivia 2 (1999) pp. 200-230.

If this has a name, I don't know it. 

Following on from Conj., I should say that my examples are from discipline specific journals. Nature (and I think Science) are more like:

Numerous authors (superscript 1-4) have previously suggested that...

And the reference list is in order of citation without article titles.

For my stuff, I have to deal with all of the above (well, my field includes Science and Nature), which is maddening, especially since some journals from the same publisher have different citation styles.

[polly_mer]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

See, I learned early on that in Math, many journals cite like this:

In [1], the authors establish Equation 3 for the special case of....  Jones and Smith use this approach to further narrow the bounds in [2]....

Then the bibliography lists the references in alphabetical order by author, and chronologically for articles with the same author-set:

[1] Him, Me-and, A Special Case of Equation 3, J. Abstract Nonsense 4 (1996), pp. 123-129.

[2] Jones, A. and Smith, B, Further Narrowing a Bound, J. Pointless Trivia 2 (1999) pp. 200-230.

If this has a name, I don't know it. 

Following on from Conj., I should say that my examples are from discipline specific journals. Nature (and I think Science) are more like:

Numerous authors (superscript 1-4) have previously suggested that...

And the reference list is in order of citation without article titles.

For my stuff, I have to deal with all of the above (well, my field includes Science and Nature), which is maddening, especially since some journals from the same publisher have different citation styles.

Yep.  I have never even made an attempt to learn a particular style because every journal to which I submit has a different style.  Instead, I write what I want, keeping track of relevant citations using a shorthand of Author, Title, Year.  Then when the paper is in final form, I look up how the journal wants them, swear loudly that the journal doesn't have a template for the citation software that I'm using, and spent an hour putting the references in the proper form.

[frogfactory]

Yep.  I have never even made an attempt to learn a particular style because every journal to which I submit has a different style.  Instead, I write what I want, keeping track of relevant citations using a shorthand of Author, Title, Year.  Then when the paper is in final form, I look up how the journal wants them, swear loudly that the journal doesn't have a template for the citation software that I'm using, and spent an hour putting the references in the proper form.

You want EndNote.  <3 EndNote.

[astrofraa]

I'm not familiar with EndNote, but BibTeX makes all that citation stuff really easy.  And if a different journal wants it differently, just change one line to point to the new style file, reprocess it, and kazaam, you've got all the citations in a new format.  I teach my students how to use it, and then I never have to worry about whether they're getting the citations in the proper format.

Yours,

Astrofraa

[nerdasaurus]

Maybe this should be in another thread, but how often, and in how much detail, do you teach students about citation? I can't account for every single possible kind of source they might use, but I model common source documentation, in-text and in a works cited, and then refer them to the pages in the book that tell them how to do this. And still...they don't do it correctly. I'm thinking of ditching the lessons next semester and just saying, "Here are the pages in the book that tell you how to do this. You are capable of locating the title, author, page number, and publisher yourself." 
I don't remember ever being taught how to cite. Why on earth do they find it such an insurmountable task?

[concordancia]

Maybe this should be in another thread, but how often, and in how much detail, do you teach students about citation? I can't account for every single possible kind of source they might use, but I model common source documentation, in-text and in a works cited, and then refer them to the pages in the book that tell them how to do this. And still...they don't do it correctly. I'm thinking of ditching the lessons next semester and just saying, "Here are the pages in the book that tell you how to do this. You are capable of locating the title, author, page number, and publisher yourself." 
I don't remember ever being taught how to cite. Why on earth do they find it such an insurmountable task?

I assign the field citation guide as a required text. I cut and paste their miscited bibliographies (this semester, we had four different examples of how not to cite one text) to have them correct in class. I walk around making sure that they have figured out how to use the guide. My better students got it. I don't know why we need to teach them to use a reference book, but we do.

I still can't get some of them to understand 1) close quote; 2) space; 3) open parenthesis; 4) # (they are often only using one source in shorter papers, no author name necessary in the citation); 5) close parenthesis; 6) period. Many more can't figure out to put commas or periods inside the quotation marks if you do not have a parenthetical citation. The whole Author, Title, Date, etc. concept seems like rocket science compared to that.

[mystictechgal]

Maybe this should be in another thread, but how often, and in how much detail, do you teach students about citation? I can't account for every single possible kind of source they might use, but I model common source documentation, in-text and in a works cited, and then refer them to the pages in the book that tell them how to do this. And still...they don't do it correctly. I'm thinking of ditching the lessons next semester and just saying, "Here are the pages in the book that tell you how to do this. You are capable of locating the title, author, page number, and publisher yourself." 
I don't remember ever being taught how to cite. Why on earth do they find it such an insurmountable task?

In spite of what I said upthread about not having learned to cite I was just surprised to find out that evidently my local, small town, high school actually does teach this.  I took pity on a young man who could not find any hard-copy sources on stem-cell research in our teeny-tiny library.  He took the initiative to ask a woman he knows who works at the hospital (she just happened to be here) if there might be anything on it in the hospital library. (Good initiative.  That's why I decided to help.)  There is, but he can't access it, so she agreed to go photocopy some of it for him and bring it back to the library.  Since he was just going to hang and wait I showed him Google Scholar and pulled up some journal articles for him to see.  He was worried whether his teacher would just consider this another Internet source (and he already had those) and I, assuming he was a college freshie told him that he could legitimately cite it as though it were a hard-copy source that was also available at <insert web site>.  I asked if he was required to cite using MLA and he said he was (he actually knew what I was talking about), so I showed him the section of the on-line MLA stylebook that spoke to citations of this type.  I told him that not only would his professor not mind his using a peer-reviewed journal article that he accessed online--as opposed to the Reader's Digest, but that they would most probably be impressed.  That's when he told me that he was a high school student so he hoped they would be impressed.  I think this kid's gonna end up being one of the good ones.  I hope.  Instead of just hanging, he's now busy at one of the terminals pulling up and reading stem-cell journal articles.  And, I just found out that the paper isn't due until some time in December.  Some prof is going to like this student, I think.

[treehouse]

Gah! I get one of these every year. The holiday doesn't start until Wednesday, and they KNOW that!.

I was looking over my flight information for Thanksgiving Break and saw that my flight leaves that Mon, meaning I would miss class on Tuesday. I tried changing my flight but it would be a $150.00 difference that I can't afford. Is there work I can make up so that my grades will not be affected by this absence?

[barcrossliar]

Gah! I get one of these every year. The holiday doesn't start until Wednesday, and they KNOW that!.

I was looking over my flight information for Thanksgiving Break and saw that my flight leaves that Mon, meaning I would miss class on Tuesday. I tried changing my flight but it would be a $150.00 difference that I can't afford. Is there work I can make up so that my grades will not be affected by this absence?

Makes you wonder whether some mysterious force took over the student's mouse when s/he made the reservations.  Seriously, who doesn't know when their flight leaves?  This is coersion.  If they asked you before buying the ticket, they'd be responsible.  Now you're supposed to feel like a villian for making them take responsibility for their absence.  I understand students wanting to stretch the vacation, I just expect them to take the consequences.  My only question is: Why not leave the Friday before?

-+LR