Six Rules for WEB Citations

More and more students are using the World Wide Web to research their term papers.  As far as I know, there is as yet no single standard for doing footnotes and bibliographies citing WEB resources.  There are, however, a number of rules which my students should follow.

1.  Provide as much information as possible.

2.  Be consistent in the way you present information.

3.  If the information is available in print form, then use the citation format as if you had read the material in a book, magazine, or newspaper.  Additionally add:  Available online from . . .[list URL]  and Accessed on . . .[list date].

4.  If the material is not available in print form, then try to put it into a standard format.  The general rule for bibliographies is:

a.  List the author who wrote the material. List in alphabethical order.  Last name first for first author only.  If no author is given, then omit this first entry.

b.  Next comes the name of the article in quotation marks.  Many WEB pages have a heading.  Use this heading as the name of the WEB page in quote marks.

c.  The third item in a normal footnote or bibliographic entry is the name of the magazine or title of the book.  This is usually underlined or italics.  For your WEB citation, use the name of organization, whose WEB page this is, as the equivalent for the name of the magazine or book.  Below is an example of what I mean:

"Africa Backs France on Iraq,"  BBC News, UK Edition, Thursday, 20 February, 2003, 19:10
     GMT.  Online available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2785239.stm. 
     (Accessed Thursday, February 20, 2003.)

BBC News is the organization, which posted the article "Africa Backs France on Iraq."  I accessed the article on the same day that it was first posted.  One of the problems with the WEB is that many news articles will disappear from the WEB when pages are pulled.  This is a major problem with information based on the Internet. Some material is archived and can be found later, but usually under a different URL address.  News organizations often charge for accessing archived information.  They want to make money.  There really is no free lunch. 

The purpose of footnoting is so that your reader can find the source material on which your paper is based. 

One of you gave me this citation:
 
Fear at the Front 2/03/03~www.newsweek.msnbc.com.
 
This is an inadequate citation because I can not find the page that dealt with "Fear at the Front."  Note again, that the date when an article is first posted becomes very important if we are talking about a news item.  Also what is the ~ supposed to mean?

That same person gave me this citation:

Timeline of post-Gulf War U.S./Iraq Conflict
1/30/03~www.cbcnewsonline.com

I finally found the material by using the Google browser and I would suggest that this WEB page might be cited as follows:

CBC [Canadian Broadcast Company]  News Online, "Timeline of post-Gulf War U.S./Iraq Conflict," 
           CBC News:  Backgrounder:  Iraq. Online available from: http://cbc.ca/news/features/iraq/timeline.html
            (Accessed Thursday, February 20, 2003.)

Note that I have made CBC News Online into the Author because that would be the by-line which a newspaper would use if it printed this article.  I have used CBC News: Backgrounder: Iraq as if it were the name of the book or magazine.  My suggestion is that you make the name of the organization whose page this is into the equivalent of the title of the book.

By the way, if the organization cited has letters in its name, you might explain what the letter signify.  CBC stands for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  You could have written:  CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] News Online  The brackets, rather than parentheses, indicate that you added this information.

Note further that the article "Timeline of post-Gulf War U.S./Iraq Conflict" is not dated.  Hence I don't know when it was posted.  Since the timeline goes to August 2002, I know that it was posted after that date.

I have also modified another student's entry to fit into a normal print format. 

"Statement of Speaker Dennis Hastert Regarding Alan Greenspan’s Comment on the
     Economy", Congressman J. Dennis Hastert: 14th District of Illinois: News. 
     September 13, 2002.  Online available from:
     http://www.house.gov/hastert/news/budget/020913greenspan.htm
     (Accessed Thursday, February 20, 2003.)

There is another way of doing this same citation, which is the way most government documents are presented.

U.S. House of Representatives.  Office of the Speaker.  Congressman J. Dennis Hastert. 
      "Statement of Speaker Dennis Hastert Regarding Alan Greenspan’s Comment on the
       Economy", Congressman J. Dennis Hastert: 14th District of Illinois: News.  September 13, 2002. 
       Online available from: http://www.house.gov/hastert/news/budget/020913greenspan.htm 
      (Accessed Thursday, February 20, 2003.)

In government documents, you would also state 108th Congress, First Session for all documents published since January 3, 2003.  Again, as much as possible follow the regular print formats presented in the Turabian style manual.

5.  Rule Five is that you should always remember that the basic purpose for a bibliography is that the reader can find the material cited.  Prepare your WEB citations, so that you and everyone else can FIND the article using the information provided by you.  Give more information rather than less.  Being accurate is very important, especially when citing an URL.  URLs should work.  They should link to the sources cited.

6.  Lastly, I would like to ask you to group your WEB citations as a distinct category separate from your print material.  In long bibliographies, it is often customary to group government documents, books, magazines, and newspapers into separate categories.  Your bibliographies won't be that long, but for clarity, list print sources first and then do all the WEB sources second. Alphabetize your bibliography.

7.  Be aware that bibliographies differ from footnotes.  You are doing a bibliography.  If you were to write a term paper, you would have footnotes throughout your text and then your bibliography at the end.

Dr. Harold Damerow
Professor of Government and History
Union County College
Cranford, NJ
Last Updated November 30, 2006