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POLB90
Winter 2020

Citing Your Sources: Endnotes, Footnotes, Bracketed References, Bibliography

It is important to use an acceptable format in citing any works you use in writing your
essay. The most commonly used and most efficient method used in political science is presented
below. There are a number of variations in the details of even this format. What is important is to
be 100 percent consistent in whatever format you follow. Note carefully the punctuation in the
samples below. If you are accustomed to using a different method, you may use it for this essay.
BUT WHATEVER FORMAT YOU USE, YOU MUST USE THE SAME FORMAT
CONSISTENTLY THROUGHOUT THE ESSAY.

Citing your sources in the essay (bracketed references)

Example:

The Fund coordinated the response to what appeared to be the imminent collapse of the global
financial system in 1982. In the most important case, the then IMF Managing Director, Jacques
de Larosière, through threatening to withhold new loans from the IMF to Mexico, successfully
pressured reluctant commercial banks to lend more money to that country, a practice which
became known as “concerted lending” (Aggarwal 1996, 342).1

Note: Author’s last name and year with no comma between. There is, however, a comma
between the year and the page number. If you have two distinct publications but the same author
and year (the same author has two publications in one year), add “a” and “b” after the year and
distinguish each as such in the bibliography.

Endnotes/Footnotes

Endnotes and footnotes should be used only for explanatory notes or elaborations. Choose
EITHER endnotes or footnotes. Do NOT use both endnotes and footnotes in the same essay.
Endnotes are preferable to footnotes because they are less intrusive and easier to manage.
Endnotes should be numbered consecutively and placed at the end of the paper, before the
bibliography. The title “Notes” or “Endnotes” should appear at the top of the (new) page where
the endnotes begin. See example below.

Notes (start new page)

1. Banks were apparently threatened with increased regulatory attention (James 1996, 371).

Bibliography
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All references used in your essay must be listed in alphabetical order, by the author’s last name.
Note carefully the format and punctuation in the entries below, and the difference in the way the
book article and the journal article are handled. Book titles must be either in Italics or they must
be underlined. Articles are enclosed in quotation marks. Articles in journals must show volume
and issue number and page range.

Bibliography

Citation from a book:

Esteva, Gustavo, Salvatore Babones, and Philipp Babcicky. 2013. The Future of Development. A
Radical Manifesto. Bristol UK: Polity Press.

Citation from a journal article:

Gore, Charles. 2000. The Rise and Fall of the Washington Consensus as a Paradigm for
Developing Countries. World Development 28 (5): 789-804.

Citation from an edited book:

Lerner, Daniel. 2000. The Passing of Traditional Society (1958). In J. Timmons Roberts and
Amy Hite (Eds.), From Modernization to Globalization, Perspectives on Development and
Social Change (pp. 119-133). Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

Citation from a Lecture:

Teichman, Judith. 2020. Title of Session. POLD90, Public Policy and Human Development in
the Global South. Nov. 10.

Citation from a Class Discussion:

Class Discussion. 2020. Title of Session. POLD90, Public Policy and Human Development in
the Global South. Nov. 10.

When you cite more than one lecture, class discussion, item by the same author:

If you cite from more than one item by the same author, then the bracketed references in your
essay and the citation in the bibliography should add, “a” “b” etc.

Hence,
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(Teichman 2020a) and (Teichman 2020b) in the text would appear thus in the bibliography:

Teichman, Judith. 2020a. Title of Session. POLD90, Public Policy and Human Development in
the Global South. Nov. 10.

Teichman, Judith. 2020b. Different Title of Session. POLD90, Public Policy and Human
Development in the Global South. Nov 17.

Internet sources:

Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of article: subtitle if any. Title of Website, Date of
Publication, URL. Accessed Day Month Year site was visited.

Note: If the author's name is not listed, begin the citation with the title of the article.

Note: If you use material from one or more articles of an edited book, you must list each article,
by author of article, separately.

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