A Personal Style Manual for Writing a History Paper
By: Fr. George McDaniel

The format of the paper. What is necessary? In what order?

Title Page:

Title of Paper

Your name

Course title

Date

First page: top margin of about 2 ½ inches

Subsequent pages: margins of about one inch at the top, bottom, and sides

Do not number the title page or page one

Number each page after page one

The paper should be double-spaced.

• You may use footnotes (notes at the bottom of each page) if you can do it on your program.
• Endnotes (notes gathered at the end of the paper) are acceptable.
• You need to note all direct quotes, any factual information that is not commonly known, or any other information that is "specialized."
• The purpose of the note is to tell the reader where you learned the information and to give the reader enough information about the source so that the reader could find the information if he/she desired.

The bibliography allows the reader to see the scope of your research. Therefore, it should list all the sources you used to do your research, even though you may not have actually quoted from that source. This should include information that you looked at but did not use because you found nothing relevant.

• Author’s full name: first name, middle name or initial, last name
• Complete title of the book, underlined or in italics
• Editor, compiler, or translator, if any
• Name of series in which book appears, if any, and volume number
• Edition, if other than the first
• Number of volumes
• Facts of publication in parentheses: (City where published: Publisher, date of publication)
• Page number(s) of the particular citation

• Author’s full name: first name, middle name or initial, last name
• Title of the article, in quotation marks
• Name of the periodical, underlined or in italics
• Volume and number of the periodical
• Date of the periodical
• Page number(s) of the particular citation

• Title of the document, if any, and date
• Folio or box number or other identifying information
• Name of collection
• Depository
• City where depository is located

• Name of interviewee
• Date of interview

A book

1. Alexander Arius, St. Ambrose and the Spirit: A Revisionist View (New York: Random House, 1986) 97.

Two or more authors of a book

2. Henry Tudor and Clement DeMedici, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981) 108.

Editor of a book

3. Ulrich Hauber, Essays on Biology, ed. Carl Rice (New York: Knopf, 1968) 8.

Unknown author

4. The Times Atlas of the World, 5th ed. (New York: New York Times, 1975) 95

Work in an anthology

5. Linda Lewinsky, "Is Romantic Love Possible in the 1990s?" Romanticism Reconsidered, Northrop Frye, ed. (Little Rock: University of Arkansas Press, 1998) 64.

Article in a magazine

6. Burt Eichebaum, "The Disappearance of the Bur Oak in the Mississippi Valley," Newsweek, March 5, 1994: 65.

Article in a journal

7. A. J. Schulte, "The University as Family : An Apt Metaphor for the Twenty-first Century?" The Journal of Speculative Education, 76 (1997): 336-337.

Article in a newspaper with author and title

8. Bill Wonderful, "The Development of Macwindow," Quad-City Times, January 31, 1992.

Article in a newspaper with no author or title

9. Washington Evening Journal, January 17, 1915.

Unpublished manuscript letter

10. John Y. Stone to James L. Clarkson, January 16, 1897, Ames L. Clarkson papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Box 2.

Correspondence to author

11. Smith W. Brookhart, Jr., to author, April 23, 1981.

Interview

12. Interview, Violet Brookhart Gunn, May 17, 1980.

World Wide Web

13. Karl Wotiwa. "A Message for the New Millennium." February 29, 1999. <http://www.abc/def/vatweb~betterobey/orelse> (March 15, 1999).

CD-ROM

14. Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc. 1861-1994. CD-ROM: UMI/Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc. (December 15, 1996).

E-mail

15. Samuel Pepys. <pepys@eton.edu>. April 15, 1997. RE: What I did last night [E-mail to author <author@saunix.sau.edu>].

One author of only one work used

16. Arius, 129.

More than one author of only one work used

17. Tudor and DeMedici, 16.

Same author, more than one work used

18. Arius, St. Ambrose, 53.

Same work as immediately preceding citation

19. Ibid.

Same work but different page as immediately preceding citation

20. Ibid., 132.

• Name of the author or authors, listed alphabetically, last name, first name, initial.
• Full title of the book, including the subtitle if there is one
• Edition, if not the original
• City of publication
• Publisher’s name
• Date of publication

• Name of the author
• Title of the article
• Name of the periodical or journal
• Volume number or date or both
• Pages occupied by the article

• Name of collection
• Location of collection (library or other repository)

• Name of interviewee, date of interview

• Name of letter writer, alphabetically, last name, first name

• Title, range of dates consulted

• Author of document
• If E-mail, list the address
• Date
• Web address
• Date of last contact

Manuscript collections

George Akerson, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa.
Clyde Herring, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
William Howard Taft, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Interviews

Al Baldridge, July 21, 1981.
Edith Brookhart Millard, January 23, 1981; August 17, 1981.

Correspondence to author

Alger Hiss
George Kennan
Claude Pepper

Newspapers and Periodicals

Des Moines Register, 1920-1933
Iowa Homestead, 1920-1929
Locomotive Engineers Journal, 1919-1926
New York Times, 1920-1933

Books

Arius, Alexander. St. Ambrose and the Spirit: A Revisionist View. New York: Random
     House, 1986.
McDaniel, George William. Smith Wildman Brookhart: Iowa’s Renegade Republican. Ames:
     Iowa State University Press, 1995.
Tudor, Henry and Clement DeMedici. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving
     In. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
Wall, Joseph Frazier. Iowa: A History. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1978.

Periodicals, Journals, Newspaper Articles

Ashby, Darell LeRoy. "Progressivism Against Itself: The Senate Wester Bloc in the 1920's."
      Mid-America 50: 291-304.

Electronic Sources

Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc. 1861-1994. CD-ROM: UMI/Dissertation Abstracts Ondisc.
     (December 15, 1996).
Pepys, Samuel. <pepys@eton.edu>, April 15, 1997, RE: What I did last night [E-mail to author
     <author@saunix.sau.edu>].
Wotiwa, Karl. "A Message for the New Millennium." February 29, 1999.
     <http:/www.abc/def/vatweb~betterobey/orelse> (March 15, 1999).

The apostrophe is used to indicate letters omitted in a contraction:

• I can’t turn in my paper because the hard disk crashed.
• It’s a blessing when the computer works correctly.

• The student’s paper was well done because she followed this manual.
• The students’ papers were well done because they followed this manual.

• It’s unusual for the dog not to wag its tail.

Quotation marks are used to indicate direct quotations. The general rule is that if the quotation is less than three lines long it should be put into the text. However, for quotations of longer than four typed lines of prose, indent each line five spaces from the left margin and single space. No quotation marks are needed for an indented block quote.

When a quotation mark comes at the end of a sentence, the punctuation goes inside the quotation mark:

• "It snowed the day of the final exam."
• "Why did bees swarm around the cradles of the infant Ambrose?"
• "Stop it!"

• Harold wrote, "I regret I am unable to attend the fundraiser for the Department of History"; his letter, however, contained a substantial contribution .

Primary sources originate during the time you are studying. These include diaries, letters, government documents, newspaper and magazine articles of the time, photographs, legal proceedings.

Secondary sources are works of history written later about the time you are studying. These include monographs, biographies, journal articles. Generally speaking a textbook is not a proper secondary source.

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