When Should I Footnote?

When to Use Footnotes, Endnotes, or Parenthetical References

You must provide a complete footnote, endnote, or parenthetical reference whenever you:

(a) paraphrase another author by re-phrasing his/her ideas or information into your own words.

(b) quote another author by using his/her exact words. All passages quoted must appear in quotation marks, for shorter quotes; or, in the case of a longer quotation, it should be set off from the text as a "block quote," i.e., indented and single spaced. Every quotation should have its own footnote, endnote, or parenthetical reference telling the reader exactly where you found that quote.

(c) include facts which are not common knowledge . In general, any fact, figure, statistic, etc., which is important enough to include in your written work should be accompanied by a source reference.

A complete footnote or endnote would include:

• the work's author
• the work's title
• the publisher of the work
• place and date of publication
• the number of the page where the relevant passage was found

In a parenthetical reference, the author, date, and page number appear in parentheses immediately after the quotation or paraphrase (Wackenhut, 1992: 42-43), and a bibliography is attached at the end of the paper which lists (alphabetically by author) all works referred to in your paper. Each bibliographic entry should include all of the information which a complete endnote or footnote would include, with the exception of page numbers.

A typical bibliographical entry might look like this:

Wackenhut, William W. (1992) The Global Economy and Me.
New York: Hypothetical Publishers.

WARNING

Plagiarism is using anyone else's words or ideas without proper acknowledgement. As with any academic work, ALL quotations from anybody else's work MUST appear in quotation marks, and MUST be attributed to the author in a complete footnote, endnote, or parenthetical reference. In addition, whenever you discuss or use someone else's ideas, or paraphrase (i.e., rephrase into your own words) things they have written, you must provide a footnote, endnote, or parenthetical reference which acknowledges the source you are using. Failure to do so is plagiarism.