footnotes in research papers

[ProudGrandma]

Is this a thing of the past?  Am I too "old school"? We are using Essentials In Writing and the upper level books do not teach making footnotes.  So I contacted the company and Matthew, the teacher sent this back to me:

What do you all think of this?  I think this is a problem.  People need to give proper credit to those who deserve and in my opinion, they make your paper more credible because if someone disagrees or wants more information they know exactly what page, in what book to go to...not just the book. 

Anyway, this is the response I received....

 

Instead of teaching footnotes, I teach in-text citations. I find that as society and writing changes, footnotes are becoming less and less common at the undergraduate and even graduate level. (I have completed one masters degree and am working on a second one.) Instead, many professors only require a Bibliography or Works Cited page. If they ask for sources to be cited within the paper, in-text citations are the most common form for such.

 

Additionally, I find that many students who are entering high school struggle with these simple writing practices for research papers:

 

1. Paraphrasing content from sources on notecards

2. Organizing note cards by topic

3. Writing source cards

4. Drafting a paper that includes their own words and paraphrased content from sources

5. Effectively organizing a research paper so that it is structured like an essay

 

With this in mind, I believe high school students need instruction, modeling, and practice with the basics of writing a research paper. And, since many schools are more concerned with students being able to communicate effectively in written language, I focus on that the first two years of our high school levels.

 

Once they have had two years focusing on the basics listed above, I introduce in-text citations. If students know how to research, paraphrase, and include their own words in an effectively written research paper, they are ready to learn a technical element of research papers: citing sources within the composition using in-text citations. I introduce and teach in-text citations in level 11.

 

I hope this information helps you understand our overall goals with our high school levels while shedding light on citing sources.

[regentrude]

Yes, people need to give credit for citations, but footnotes are not the only way to do this. You can cite sources and have end notes at the end of the paper, before the bibliography. I prefer footnotes to be used sparingly for side remarks that you want to include without disrupting the flow of the argument. 

ETA: It depends on the style manual you are supposed to use, and also varies by discipline. Some disciplines use footnotes, and some only endnotes.

[mamaraby]

Not using footnotes is not the same thing as not citing your sources. You’ll notice he says he teaches in-text citations. Like Regenetrude mentioned, how you cite your sources greatly depends on the style manual. MLA and APA both use the in text parenthetical citation.

We have used WWS, but I teach MLA style citations instead of SWB’s footnotes after the first couple of papers. While teaching footnotes is not incorrect, I think making students aware of the different styles and where to look that information up is wise. Ds has been introduced to the Purdue Online Writing Lab’s section on research and citation - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/

[RootAnn]

Yes to in text citations with a Works Cited or References page. Depending on style (Chicago, APA, or MLA), they look different. I am most familiar with MLA, but eldest is writing a research paper in DE Psych and has to use APA, so she's learning that, too.

Still giving credit, still saying what page number, but not in a footnote.

[Lori D.]

While the role and focus of footnotes has changed in recent years, the importance of citing sources has not. In fact, by shifting to in-text citations (which give author and page number, at least in MLA format), credit is given directly adjacent to the source of the information, elevating (literally! (:D) the importance of sources by giving credit right next to the information, within the text, rather than making it easy to ignore the sources by giving credit at the bottom of the page in a footnote.

The trend now for research papers is to give credit through in-text citations (also called "parenthetical citations"), which cite within the paragraph itself, plus full citations of all information about each source in the Works Cited page at the end of the paper. Footnotes and endnotes are for lengthy asides and explanations rather than for citing sources.

In regards to the response you received from the Essentials in Writing author -- note he is FIRST focusing on teaching foundational skills -- how to write, and how to structure a paper -- and THEN when those skills are mastered, he moves on to formatting concerns such as citations. So he's not suggesting you NOT give credit, but rather, has you deal with that AFTER a student has mastered basic writing skills for multi-paragraph essays and research papers. I agree with his strategy, and I do this with my Lit. & Comp. classes as well, as only about 20-25% of high school students come in to class able to write a solid multi-paragraph essay. We need to first spend an entire semester working on what needs to go into the paragraph, how to write a thesis statement, how to support the thesis, etc., before the students are ready to tackle the details of when/how to cite sources.

If your student has the foundations of solid writing down, then by all means, jump ahead and teach citing sources! :) The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue is a terrific resource for MLA, APA, and Chicago formats, including citing sources. Here are the first paragraphs from OWL at Purdue on how the in-text citation (parenthetical citation) provides the quick, in-the-midst credit of author and page #, and the matching Works Cited page contains the full citation for making it easy to find the source:

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263). 

Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).

 

Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).

 

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. Oxford UP, 1967.

[hornblower]

My kids are finding that their college courses are either APA or MLA.   I would suggest students learn at least the basics of each of these & their idiosyncrasies (for ex APA frowns on direct quotes) before arriving at college. Some profs are brutal about formatting and will dock points for orthographic citation errors.  It can take a stupidly long time to arrange headers right (APA for instance has a different running head on the title page than on the rest of the paper) etc etc. If you're good with working with templates and find reputable ones, it can save a lot of time.   Dd  owns the print version of the latest APA style manual as it was a required text for her nursing program.  Most times though you can get away with Purdue Owl. 

As far as your specific comment, my biggest beef with APA is that it doesn't lead you directly to a page number, just the whole journal article. Like you say, I like to be able to go directly to a section and see if it's saying what they think it's saying. Sending me to a 25 page journal article is almost pointless.  Chicago is better imo for tracking down original source material.  But when you're writing for a prof (or a publication) you format it as they like; some faculties have made it a matter of policy to ask for a specific citation style and nothing will sway them. 

Btw, I have heard that some students like APA because the inline cites do a nice job of padding papers :P  If you have a reference article with 3-5 authors, the first time you cite them you have to spell out all their names out in the inline cite.  Rumour has it some students deliberately search for & pick articles with that many authors (bonus points for long or hyphenated names!) if they're short on  page counts for their essays LOL.  Ahhh, students ;) 

The broader issue of course is knowing what to cite and when and how to avoid plagiarizing. That's a concept that has to taught separately from the mechanics of how you'll reference things imo. 
 

[Lecka]

This is what I think (I’m not 100% on details)..... APA and MLA do not have footnotes.

Chicago style can have footnotes or endnotes, depending.

It depends on the field of study what style book they use.  You can find this out if you know a potential major.

Otherwise.... students are expected to be flexible and use the style the teacher wants, sometimes.

Other times, students can use the style of their choice, as long as it’s one of the popular styles like MLA, APA, or Chicago (these are the ones I hear about anyway).  I would guess APA might be most utilitarian but if you know a student is headed for a certain field you could pick one that way, but know when they take other classes a teacher may want a different style used.  

Here is the thing.

Its very different with being able to cut and paste and have word commands and templates.  

Its much, much easier.  Much, much easier.

And so, the focus has changed.  It’s more about appropriateness of quotes and choices.

Because ——— a lot of the picky stuff that used to need a lot of attention, is a matter of copy-and-paste now.

Especially for articles!  Many articles come with a citation generator thing, that lets you just select the style you want and then copy and paste, or forward it to yourself in an email.  And probably other things I don’t know about, lol!  

So anyway ——— your child doesn’t need to learn footnotes, because if he/she needs them in the future, it just won’t be very hard to do it.

He/she does need to know how to use A style and reference a style book or website.

He/she does need to know how to quote appropriately.

 

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Here is an online style guide for APA that I have seen recommended a lot.

Just as an example.  

For me personally I learned MLA in high school with a physical book (style guide).

Then when I took classes more recently I had to change to APA and learn how to use an online library.  For me, learning how to use the online library was much harder than switching to APA. Switching to APA when I had a solid background with MLA was fine.

 

 

[Farrar]

I think the OP isn't understanding what in text citation looks like in MLA format. It does include the page number. It's just included in parenthesis after the citation.

Overall, I think the focus is the right one. I think everything has gone all backwards in our quest to push kids to write these very academic papers at younger and younger ages. Now we've got 3rd graders who understand how to write bibliographies and footnotes, but who can barely write a decent sentence on their own. The underpinning of why citations are important and what constitutes plagiarism should be an ongoing dialogue and lesson from a young age throughout language arts education. However, the emphasis doesn't need to be on the formatting of academic citations until later, IMHO.

[Lecka]

I re-read the original post.

I am no expert, but.... MLA style does include page numbers in the in-text citation.  That means that within the body of the paper, at an appropriate place (according to the style, lol) there will be a page number.

APA style doesn’t, but I think it’s more common in fields that have more articles than books, and it includes the publication date.  If an article is short it’s not hard to find the information.  BUT within the body of the text, you can see the publication date to see how recent the information is.

So it can depend on context, what information will be most helpful to readers.  

 

 

 

 

[Lecka]

Yes..... I haven’t seen exactly that, but I see things like — apparently it’s more important to teach how to do a power point presentation than how to write well.  If someone can write well, the power point presentation is not going to be a huge problem.

But if they can’t write well, their power point may not be very clear or well-organized.  

I haven’t seen it *that* bad with power points, but definitely enough to feel some frustration!  

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

Yes..... I haven’t seen exactly that, but I see things like — apparently it’s more important to teach how to do a power point presentation than how to write well.  If someone can write well, the power point presentation is not going to be a huge problem.

I find that writing and presenting are two separate skills that each need to be taught. A person can be an excellent writer and yet have no idea how to create visually appealing slides, how much text is just enough, what images to select, how to format axes on a graph so the graph shows exactly the information you want to present, and how to actually present a presentation with visual aids without reading from a piece of paper. (The culture of presentations in the humanities is heavily based on actually reading aloud the paper you wrote, even at top level conferences; no extemporating, little eye contact - even from accomplished writers).

[Lori D.]

21 hours ago, regentrude said:

I find that writing and presenting are two separate skills that each need to be taught. A person can be an excellent writer and yet have no idea how to create visually appealing slides, how much text is just enough, what images to select, how to format axes on a graph so the graph shows exactly the information you want to present, and how to actually present a presentation with visual aids without reading from a piece of paper. (The culture of presentations in the humanities is heavily based on actually reading aloud the paper you wrote, even at top level conferences; no extemporating, little eye contact - even from accomplished writers).

Absolutely agree.

Foundational to a good visual presentation is CONTENT. Which means solid research and writing, and thorough understanding of your material to START with, before even thinking about putting together a slide presentation or other visual aids.