Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Do I have to footnote if I have already in text referenced?

I am currently doing a historical essay, and I have just in text referenced a source, but I have been told that in historical essays everything should be footnoted. Is this still applicable if I have already in text referenced?


Thanks in advance :)Do I have to footnote if I have already in text referenced?
I would go for the footnotes and take out your in-text reference. If you do a lot of in-text references, they tend to get distracting. And, if you're doing an essay for a teacher (especially a university prof or college prof), chances are they've read billions of historical essays and are quite used to a standard format. So if you know you're supposed to footnote but you in-text reference instead, they might get too distracted and give you a worse mark or something. Always go for the way your teacher wants it. And don't double-reference. So I would seriously take out the in-text and just do footnotes.Do I have to footnote if I have already in text referenced?
Check with whoever will be marking your essay. Usually, students can either reference sources in their text or put all the references in footnotes at the end, depends on the marker or sometimes the school/college/uni will have an overall policy about this.


By text referencing, do you mean you mentioned the source, or cited it (publication, page number, author) fully? If you cited it fully, you don't need to footnote it, AS LONG AS YOU REMAIN CONSISTENT throughout - either all text referencing or all footnotes.


Personally, when I'm marking, as long as the student is consistent I accept either.However, as I said above, check with the marker to be sure.





I agree with you Beatles2 - in text referencing can be distracting, so I prefer the footnotes all at the end.However, as I mentioned in my main answer, as long as the student is consistent, whatever they are comfortable with is OK with me - in my job I'm there to help them, not make life unnecessarily difficult for them

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