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 footnotes and bibliographies
is that:
a. List the author who wrote the material. 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 put in
italics. I prefer underlining). 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 footnotes and 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.
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.
Dr. Harold Damerow
Professor of Government and History
Union County College
Cranford, NJ
Last Updated November 30, 2006
