“Citing Titles: Basic Rules,” by Elizabeth Shown Mills
[Excerpted from Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, 3d ed. rev. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2017), pp. 52–53, §2.22–2.23.]
“Six basic rules govern our citation of titles, regardless of the type of record or publication we are using:
1) BOOK, CD, DVD, JOURNAL, MAP, WEBSITE, ETC.
For published stand-alone works, you copy the exact title and put it in italics.
2) MANUSCRIPT FILE, COLLECTION, SERIES, SUB-SERIES & RECORD GROUP
Titles are copied exactly, using headline-style capitalization. File titles may carry quotation marks for clarity; titles of larger record sets do not.
3) NAMED PART OF A PUBLISHED BOOK, CD, JOURNAL, WEBSITE, ETC.
For parts of a published work, such as a chapter in a book, an article in a journal, a song on an album, or a database at a website, you should copy the exact title and put quotation marks around it.
4) TITLED, BUT UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT, REGISTER, ETC.
For an unpublished manuscript or typescript, you should copy the title exactly and put quotation marks around it.
5) UNTITLED, UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT, REGISTER, ETC.
When a manuscript or record book has no title, you should create your own generic description, you do not place your words in italics, because you are not quoting anything. You may want to add an explanation in square editorial brackets.
6) FOREIGN LANGUAGE TITLES
When a work’s title appears in a language other than our own, we have options for describing the record. We may simply copy the title of the document exactly as it appears. Or we may add, after the title, a translation in square editorial brackets. Our translation should appear in roman type, not italics, and it will not carry quotation marks because our translation is not an exact quote. For example:
- Jean Milfort-Leclerc, Mémoire, ou, Coup-d’oeil rapide sur mes différens voyages et mon séjour dans la nation Creek [Memoir: Or, a Quick Glance at My Different Travels and My Sojourn in the Creek Nation] (Paris: Giguet et Michaud, 1802), 41.”
Guidelines for citations such as the above are what have made Evidence Explained: Citing Historical Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. Third Edition Revised the leading reference in its field. For more information about this extraordinary book, click the button below.
