REFERENCE WORKS
This entry covers publications such as dictionaries, encyclopediae, style guides, and the like. There are a few relevant differences between citing these works and a regular book; all of these differences apply to the note form, not the bibliography form, however, so we will only have examples in note format. Other than the differences noted below, you may cite reference works as you would any other publication of that medium.
First, any such work that is organized into sections will be cited by said sections, rather than by page number, like the classical works above:
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16. The Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 14.232.
Works organized into entries, such as dictionaries, will be cited by entry. However, rather than treat them like a chapter or section in a standard book, you treat them like a page number. This is marked by the abbreviation s.v., which stands for sub verbo, ‘under the word’. If your citation refers to multiple entries, indicate this by typing s.vv. instead, then listing the entries. Note that the s.v. is placed at the very end for print sources, but for online sources, it is followed by the “last modified”date and the URL.
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17. Wikipedia, s.v. “Potawatomi Trail of Death,” last modified February 5, 2019, 05:02, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potawatomi_Trail_of_Death.
Particularly well-known and reliable reference works, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, need not appear in the bibliography at all, but can be cited only in the notes. These citations only require the name of the work, the edition/year, and the entry in question:
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18. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), s.v. “Dalek.”
ANCIENT, SACRED, MEDIEVAL, OR CLASSIC TEXTS
Some texts have been reprinted and re-translated so often over the centuries that conventional citations are counterproductive. If, for instance, you cited page 73 of Beowulf, your reader may be unable to find that reference – there are dozens of different translations and editions out there, very few of which share pagination. Even if you specify the edition, that may frustrate readers who have other editions. However, nearly all editions of Beowulf have the same line-numbering system, so citing line 2145 will be accessible to everyone. This same concept, on a larger scale, is what we call “classical citation”.
Classical citation applies only to old, widely-circulated texts with many varied editions. In classical citation, rather than follow page number, you simply follow whatever organizational scheme the author set up, as well as a line number for poetic works. This is used only in note citations – in the bibliography, you are expected to cite the book as normal, so that all the information on your specific edition is provided. The format is extremely simple, and goes as follows:
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7. Author, Title, number.number.number.
It is considerate to your reader to specify the edition, translator, numbering system, or any other relevant information in the very first note citation:
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8. Author, Title (Firstname Lastname’s numbering), number.number.number., trans. Firstname Lastname, ed. Firstname Lastname (City: Publisher, year).
Note that you should only include those details if they’re relevant – it is rare, for instance, that there are competing numbering systems that would require you to specify whose you are using. Often the editor is the translator, and therefore does not need to be cited twice. In all subsequent note citations, use only the brief classical citation.
The numbers by which you cite a specific passage in one of these texts vary depending on the type of text you are using. For an epic poem, you should use “book.line”; for classic plays, you should use “act.scene.line.”; for many medieval and classical texts, you should use “book.chapter.section”, if all three are provided. Some texts, like Plato’s or Aristotle’s works, have their own specialized numbering systems. Prose texts that were not divided into chapters and sections by the author are often just cited by paragraph number. Sacred texts generally use colons instead of periods and cite “chapter:verse” – however, if you are citing a sacred text from any religion you are not intimately familiar with, you should check and see what system the adherents of that religion have developed for their text, or at least follow conventions set down by authoritative scholarship.
There are a few additional quirks in classical citation. For instance, if you are citing the Bible, you must specify which version you are using in every note citation, due to the wide variation from one to another. Many classical texts and authors have official abbreviations you can use if you want to shorten your citations still further – the catalog of these abbreviations is maintained by the Oxford Classical Dictionary. If you feel it is necessary, you can also include labels such as “bk.”, “para.”, “line”, “chap.”, and so forth in the first note, in which case you would write it more like this:
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Author, Title, bk. number, chap. number, sec. number.
The following examples cover a range of different types of texts that commonly use classical citation.
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9. Gilgamesh, tablet 2, lines 111-4.
10. Matthew 10:34 (NRSV).
11. Tac., Germ., para. 40.
12. Milton, Paradise Lost, 1.620.
13. Beowulf 86-9, ed. Friedrich Klaeber (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1950).
14. Qur’an 45:6.
15. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.2.342.