Turabian Author-Date Style

Why Turabian?

Why Does University College use the Turabian Style? The answer is that this style transcends across all of our academic programs and was chosen by a committee.

There is a great website that goes into detail about why we use style guides at all. The following overview comes from https://www.writethedocs.org/guide/writing/style-guides/.

Turabian 101

See below for a quick video highlighting the basics of Turabian Author-Date style.

Style Guide Overview

A style guide is a set of standards for the writing and design of content, defining the style to be used in communication within a particular organization. Basically, style guides are put together to clarify the way a group of people talk and write about the things they do. Think of authoring best practices.

If you happen to have a background in academia or journalism, you will probably be familiar with AP Stylebook or Chicago Manual of Style. Those are great resources for writing in general, particularly for grammar and syntax, but if you’re reading this page, chances are you are considering style in the context of technical documentation.

Style guides help you write a variety of content, such as documenting the methods of an API, presenting an overview of complex technical concepts, or focusing on writing particular content like user manuals, release notes, or tutorials.

Guides often help writers focus on the different readers of technical documentation, describing how to adapt content to different reader profiles, like developers, product managers, the general public, and others.

Many focus on the language itself (tone, style, grammar).

Others go beyond the content and discuss the organization of the documentation, providing best practices on how to manage your content, version control, or publication and delivery strategies. While this is not the focus in this style guide for style guides, how your documentation is organized and the ease in which your readers can find what they are looking for can be as important as the content itself.

Why Do I Need a Style Guide?

A practical reason to use a style guide is that they help you write content. Human languages are extremely flexible, and there are many ways in which a particular message can be communicated. By following a style guide, you limit the variation, making it easier to focus on getting your message across. This makes style guides extremely useful for people joining projects.

Style guides also increase consistency in your content. There are good reasons why you want to keep a consistent tone, voice, and style in your documentation. Marketing-oriented folks understand the importance of voice and tone in building a brand identity, a strategy we can extend into technical writing. Consistency also has a big impact on how effectively you communicate – that is, how well you manage to transfer particular information to your audience.

There’s science behind this. Our brains appear to be hardwired to identify differences – anything that stands out from its context will catch our attention. A lot of variation will drain our cognitive resources, making it more difficult for us to assimilate information. The degree to which cognitive resources are drained varies between people, but in general, it is a good idea to minimize the cognitive load of your communications.

Citation Overview

Author - Date Style = Citations and References

What follows is a "quick guide" to Turabian Author Date Citation style. Additionally, chapters 18 and 19 in Turabian also teach about documentation.

The general idea of what any reference list entry contains is this:

Who
When
What
Where

Turabian Specifics

The author(s), date of publication, what was referenced, where it was found. Each section of the citation is ended with a terminal period.

THE WHO: The first entry in any reference is the author. Last name, first name.

If there are multiple authors--note that only the first author's name is inverted and that "and" should be used before the final author on the list. The first example (completely fabricated) will show a two-author book (See T 19.1), the second shows a single author journal article (See T 19.2), the third shows a three-author magazine article (See T 19.3), and the fourth shows a four- (or more) author website article (See T 19.7.1).

Nishi, Alison, and Jennifer B. Seely.

Seely, Jennifer B.

Verble, Barbara, Lance Eagleman, and Jennifer Golightly.

On the References page, ALL citations should include ALL authors, no matter how many. But the reason for including a 4 author source is for you to see how the parenthetical citation is cited. See below for that.

Wayne, John, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable.

THE WHEN: The year (T 19.1.2 & 19.2.2) of publication follows the author's or authors' name(s). Or if a publication date can't be found, a copyright date or a "last updated" date will work. PLEASE be careful with this though...if there is no date for the information, it probably isn't the information you want in your project. Properly vetted sources include a date.

Nishi, Allison, and Jennifer B. Seely. 2006.

Seely, Jennifer B. 2010.

Verble, Barbara, Lance Eagleman, and Jennifer Golightly. 2008.

Wayne, John, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable. 1950.

THE WHAT: The title of the work you're citing, capitalized headline-style (T 19.1.3). Headline style means that it is mostly capitalizeds like a normal book title. The subtitle should also be included separated from the title by a colon followed by a single space. Article titles also include quotation marks; book titles should be in italics. (The first example is now seen as a book. The second is an article.)

Nishi, Allison, and Jennifer B. Seely. 2006. Why We Hate the Turabian Book: Ten Reasons for Discarding It.

Seely, Jennifer B. 2010. "Loving the New Turabian."

Verble, Barbara, Lance Eagleman, and Jennifer Golightly. 2008. "The Power of Teaching Writing Online."

Wayne, John, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable. 1950. "How to be a Movie Star."

THE WHERE: Where is it found or Who published it

For books, we need to know the publisher's location (see T 19.1.7) and the publisher's name, which should be separated with a colon followed by a single space. The location is generally just a city name unless the city is not well-known and then a state or country name is needed.

Nishi, Allison, and Jennifer B. Seely. 2006.Why We Hate the Turabian Book: Ten Reasons for Discarding It. Salt Lake City: Example Publications.

For journal articles, we need to know in what publication the article is found (publication title only in italics), including the volume and issue (T 19.2.5), and page numbers (T 19.2.6).

Seely, Jennifer B. 2010. "Loving the New Turabian." Really Useless Publications 8 (August): 21-25.

For magazine articles (19.3), we need to know in what publication the article is found (publication title only in italics), but then just the date of the publication. Volume, Issue, and Page Numbers aren't needed.

Verble, Barbara, Lance Eagleman, and Jennifer Golightly. 2008. "The Power of Teaching Writing Online." Never Happened, September 19.

For internet articles, we need to know on what website the article is found (website name is not in italics) and the date of the publication or when it was late updated.

Wayne, John, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable. 1950. "How to be a Movie Star." Hollywood Chronicles, April 20.

MORE WHERE: URL and access date.

See T 19.2.8. If the source was found on the Internet, give the date that you found the source and the URL of the page you're citing. If the source was found in a database of articles, include the name of the database. (Sources not published online [or if you viewed the source in its printed edition] shouldn't have an access date and URL.)

Nishi, Allison, and Jennifer B. Seely. 2006. Why We Hate the Turabian Book: Ten Reasons for Discarding It. Salt Lake City: Example Publications.

Seely, Jennifer B. 2010. "Loving the New Turabian." Really Useless Publications 8 (August): 21-25. Accessed January 8, 2014. http://RUP.com/Turabianlove.

Verble, Barbara, Lance Eagleman, and Jennifer Golightly. 2008. "The Power of Teaching Writing Online." Never Happened, September 19. Accessed September 9, 2014. http://neverhappened.com/pwrtchgwrtg/

Wayne, John, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable. 1955. "How to be a Movie Star." Hollywood Chronicles, April 20. Pretending Edition. Accessed September 10, 2014. http://hollywoodchronicles.archive.com/how-to-be-a-movie-star/

ONE NOTE...Do you remember the old song from Sesame Street "one of these things is not like the others"? Clearly, the final citation doesn't belong, topically, with the others. Don't just add citations of any old source to fill out 20 citations. Your sources should be credible, valid, and reliable FOR YOUR TOPIC. Faculty will question those that don't seem to belong.

Citing the Source in Your Text

The parenthetical citation (see below for rules) is created using the first and second items-the AUTHOR(s) and the DATE. See Turabian section 18.3. The period for the sentence should follow the citation.

EXAMPLE TEXT: In most documentation styles, we find there is a method to their madness. Discovering the rhythm of the style, that is what always comes first, second, etc., helps all students to work with a new documentation style easily (Seely 2010). However, the huge number of types of sources, and possible exceptions to the source information makes a voluminous text necessary and can sometimes make discovering the rhythm of a style difficult (Nishi and Seely 2006). That's where a good instructor will step in and point out the rhythm in the style.

I'm typing another paragraph so that I can show you a parenthetical citation using the three-author magazine article from above (Verble, Eagleman, and Golightly 2008). And finally, we could not end without showing how to do a four- (or more) author parenthetical citation. No matter how many authors the source has on the References page, only the first author appears in the parenthetical citation, like this (Wayne et al. 1955). The et al. is not italicized in your parenthetical citation. It is Latin for "and others" and "al." is an abbreviation for alii, so it ends with a period. See Turabian figure 18.1 for more information on all of this.

Parenthetical Citations - a few considerations

Parenthetical citations must agree exactly with the Reference page citations.

T 18.3 The parenthetical citation shouldn't have a comma between the author and the date. Only direct quotations should include a page number in the parenthetical citation.

T 18.3.1 When paraphrasing, the parenthetical citation should go before the period of a sentence. For example,

Paraphrasing paraphrasing paraphrases paraphrasing (Author Year).

With a quotation, the quotation mark is before the citation and the period follows the citation. A page number is needed when you use a quotation. For example,

"Quoting quotation quotes quotations" (Author, Author, and Author Year, #).

In a block quotation the period comes before the parenthetical citation.

Block quotes sit in a block of text. Block quotes are

0.5" off the left margin, but the right margin remains

the same as the rest of the text, not justified. Block

quotes are for quotations that will create at least four

lines of text. (Author and Author Year, #)

When using information from the same source in multiple sentences, only the final sentence needs to have an in-text citation. Do not use "IBID".

The References Page

Your Preliminary Bibliography should be formatted as a References page. The References page is double spaced like the rest of the document will be. The vertical space before and after paragraphs is set to 0 point. Each citation should be on a hanging indent, which WORD will do automatically for you, so don't put tabs in the middle of the citation.

T 18.2.1 - Arrange your list alphabetically by the first author's last name. Note: only the first author's name is inverted so that the last name is first.