Month: September 2023

Who is the Writing Center For?

          Hello, Marauders! Welcome back to another day of learning something important! Today, I’ll be talking about who the Writing Center is open to–you! Who can come to the Writing Center? The answer is everyone and anyone who needs help with a writing assignment! 

          Here at the Writing Center, peer tutors help students with brainstorming, organizing, revising, and more. Our peer tutors are students who help fellow students improve their writing and gain a better understanding of the writing process. If it sounds strange or bothersome to have someone your age be your tutor, don’t worry! It can be a little daunting to have a fellow student or potential classmate look at your writing and give you feedback on it. Maybe you’re worried that they’re going to judge your work or mercilessly rip it apart and point out all the mistakes and flaws in it.

           BUT! It actually isn’t as bad as you might think, and let me tell you why. At the Writing Center, we don’t judge your work and we don’t do feedback like that. We don’t sit and mark up your paper with red ink. Rather, we work WITH you to help you better understand the assignment, the requirements, your goals for it, and what YOU want to focus on. We understand the time and effort you put into writing that paper, and we understand that it may or may not have been your favorite assignment ever…

          After all, we are students too, just like you–which means that just like you, we are also learning and improving as we go. We also have questions and we also definitely don’t know everything! Our top priority is to help you the best we can to improve your writing skills and help you gain confidence in your writing. 

          I hope this helps clarify who the Writing Center is for. Some helpful reminders: 

  • We are open Monday through Thursday from 1:00 pm to 9:00 pm and on Fridays from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. 
  • We offer in-person, online, and Zoom tutoring sessions. Schedule an appointment with us through Starfish (see How to Schedule an Appointment on Starfish for instructions) or feel free to drop in! Our location is McNairy Library Room 106.
  • Contact us by emailing writing.center@millersville.edu or calling (717) 871-7389.

Remember: You are important to us and we want to help you become the best writer you can be! Happy writing!

Chicago Style In-Text Citations

Introduction 

          How’s it going, Marauders? We’re already in Week 6, and that means papers are rolling in and midterms are coming up. With papers and midterms come writing – MLA! APA! References! In-text citations! A Works Cited page! These are words that college students are well acquainted with, and today we’ll be talking about none other than in-text citations. 

          APA and MLA are the two citation formats that many are probably the most familiar with (check out our other blog post about In-Text Citations: APA and MLA for more information!). But there’s another one that occasionally pops up here at the Writing Center that’s far less common. Have you ever heard of Chicago, or needed to use it? What is it, and how and when do you use it? Chicago format is typically found in Business, History, and the Fine Arts (Pitt LibGuides). There are two main styles of citations that fall under Chicago: The Notes-Bibliography System, and the Author-Date System. 

The Notes-Bibliography System 

          The first citation system we’ll talk about is the Notes-Bibliography System. The following information is from Purdue OWL: Books and Purdue OWL: Periodicals. In the Notes-Bibliography System, the in-text citation does NOT go directly into the text. Instead, you put a little number at the end of your quote. The footnote or endnote (in other words, the in-text citation) for a book would look like this, and would go at the very bottom of the page: 

“Outside, the thunder growled. There was no sign of the sun; the wind had dragged the clouds across the entire sky. It was going to be a wild night.”

1. First name Last name, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication), page number.

1. Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2016), 118. 

          For a journal article found online in a database or something similar, the in-text citation would look like this: 

1. First name Last name, “Article title,” Journal Title, volume, issue # (month year): page number(s), date accessed, retrieval information (DOI or URL).

1. Henry E. Bent, “Professionalization of the Ph.D. Degree,” The Journal of Higher Education, 30, no. 3 (March 1959): 140-146, accessed September 25, 2023, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1978286. 

The Author-Date System

          The second citation system is the Author-Date System. In this system, you put the information (author’s last name, year of publication, and page number if available) directly in the text in parentheses, which is very similar to APA. The in-text citation for a book would look like this: 

“Outside, the thunder growled. There was no sign of the sun; the wind had dragged the clouds across the entire sky. It was going to be a wild night” (Stiefvater 2016, 118). 

          What would a journal article look like? Scribbr: Chicago In-Text Citations reports that the Author-Date style of in-text citations “looks the same for every type of source” (Caulfield 2019, under “Option 1: Author-date in-text citations”). For instance, if we take the journal article example in the Notes-Bibliography section and format it in the author-date style, the in-text citation would look like this: 

“The most important single factor obscuring the nature of the Doctor’s degree arises from the large number of degree-holders in the teaching profession” (Bent 1959, 141). 

          So, if you’re using the Author-Date System, the in-text citation would look the same no matter what kind of source you use. A book, a journal article, a website, etc. would all follow the same format: (Author last name year of publication, page number). 

Missing Information 

          Sometimes, there’s no author, no page number(s), or no publication date, which is all important information you want to include if it’s there. But if it’s not there, then what do you do? How does this change the citation? 

  • If there’s no page number, you can either omit it or you can specify where the information came from by using chapters, headings, or paragraphs (see above for example). 
  • If there’s no author, you can cite the organization’s name. For example: (Scribbr 2022).  
  • If there’s no publication date, write n.d. (which stands for “no date”) in the place where the publication year would go. For example: (Stiefavter n.d., 118). 

Conclusion 

          Well, there you have it, folks! That’s a brief crash course on how to format citations in Chicago style. We talked about when Chicago format is used (most common in History, Business, and the Fine Arts). We also discussed the two different styles of in-text citations: The Notes-Bibliography System and the Author-Date System. Finally, we learned what to do if there’s missing information. For more helpful information about Chicago style, in-text citations, and references, visit Purdue OWL. For now, good luck and happy writing! You got this!