Request Tutoring Info
Please enter name
Please enter email
Please enter phone
Please enter details
 

Do You Want Your Academic Papers to Look Professional? Learn How to Use Footnotes



           It’s the small things that make the biggest difference, and the most efficient way of making your papers look professional is to have correct and consistent citations. Citations can be overwhelming, and possibly scary if you have never done them before, but with enough attention and consistency, creating citations can be a breeze. Chicago, also called Turabian, style citations are a common citation style used when writing academic papers – especially in the field of the humanities and social sciences. There are two forms of citations – Footnotes and Endnotes – but the focus of this blog is to help you understand footnotes, as those are more commonly requested by teachers. There are plenty of online citation-generating tools, however, my goal is that we can learn to do them on our own. So, let’s dive in!

  1. How to insert footnotes: The first thing you should do when creating your citations is to know exactly how to insert them. When you are ready to cite a source in your paper, locate the “Insert Footnote” tab in your online document. For Word, this tab will be located in the References section; for Google Docs, it will be found in the dropdown menu for "Insert.” After clicking the footnote tab, a footnote number will appear superscripted (above the text) and appear at the end of the sentence, outside of any punctuation. This is it, now you are ready to type your footnote!
  2. How to format the footnote: Once you have inserted the footnote number, the corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page, and the footnote will include the following information in order:
        • Author's name (first name, then last name)
        • Title of the work: Italics for the title of a book or the name of the journal that the article is published in;  “quotations” for the title of the article itself.
        • Publication information: City of publication, Publisher, and year of publication 
        • Page number(s) used from the source

I know this is a lot of information, so let’s put it all put together. Here is the general format: 
  • Author's Name, Title of Source (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), Page Number(s).

Here are two examples from my own work; first, a book; second, an article:
  • Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014), 25-26.
  • Kathy Felker Jones, “Ecclesiology,” in Practicing Christian Doctrine (Baker Publishing Group, 2014), 6.

For subsequent citations from the same source, you can use a shortened citation. Shortened citations only include 1) the last name of the author, 2) a shortened title, and 3) the page numbers. For example (using my previous sources):
  • Raheb, Empire, 25-26.
  • Jones, “Ecclesiology,” 6.

Don’t forget to include a bibliography! In addition to the footnotes, you should also include a bibliography at the end of your paper. This will list all of the sources you used in your paper. The format for the bibliography is similar to the format for a footnote. There are three distinctions between the bibliography and footnote format: 1) Name order, 2) Source order, and 3) Punctuation. The corresponding changes for the bibliography include: 1) Last name, then first name, 2) All sources are listed in alphabetical order (A-Z), 3) *Almost* all of the commas and parentheses become periods. Let’s look at the examples used above:
  • Raheb, Mitri. Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. 
  • Jones, Kathy Felker.  “Ecclesiology.” Practicing Christian Doctrine. Baker Publishing Group, 2014.

That's it! You have now successfully created the citations and bibliography for your next academic paper. Just like any skill, creating citations takes some time to learn, but it becomes simpler every time you do it. All you have to do is follow these quick and easy rules, and you will be producing professional-looking papers in no time!
Noah M
Religion, Philosophy, & Writing Tutor
Texas Lutheran University
More posts