CMC Turabian Guidelines for MS Word

Senior Thesis/Professor Carney
Revised by Jason Stiffler

Turabian Formatting for Senior Thesis

(Revised Spring 2007)

• A Note on the Poppa Lab Consultants: The Poppa computer consultants are WONDERFUL, irreplaceable, and have endless patience! However, they are not responsible for knowing the specifics of the CMC Senior Thesis Syllabus or Turabian. This is YOUR responsibility.
• A note on these requirements as a whole: Remember that no one but your reader will be involved with grading your thesis in any way. As long as your reader is happy with your formatting, then you're in good shape. Thus, if you have permission from your reader to modify the Turabian (or any other) format - go ahead and do so. The guidelines below are meant to be helpful - not prescriptive.

Some basic guidelines for use of the Turabian standard:

Margins:

• 14.2 On left side of the page leave a 1 1/2 inch margin for binding and a 1 inch margin on the right side and the bottom. Leave a margin of 1.2 on the top so that the page numbers are located exactly one inch from the top of the page.
  

(Instructions: Click on "Page Setup" under the "File" menu, click on "Margins" and adjust each one appropriately)

14.3 Older style guides will encourage you to "full justify" your thesis. Generally, this has become a deprecated practice: the document never ends up "looking quite right." If you really want to, though, no one's going to stop you - feel free. (As long as your reader is cool with it, yo.) (Instructions: Click on the appropriate button on the toolbar.)

Indentation for Paragraphs, Footnotes, and Bibliographies:

1) (OK, we took out the first point, and we can't be bothered to re-number everything: HTML is a pain.)

2) Paragraph indentation and the first line of each footnote should correspond. Turabian says to indent both of these 6 or 8 spaces. Eight spaces is slightly more than .5 inches. One quarter inch (as shown at right) or one half inch is fine, just be consistent. This first line of the footnote text should correspond to your paragraph indentation. See 14.4.

3) Be sure that you have an unbroken line about 20 spaces long (this is approximately 1.75 in.) separating the footnotes from the text. Most computer programs do this automatically when you insert footnotes.

4) In your Bibliography, the first line of each entry goes out to the margin. The second and any subsequent lines are indented the same number of spaces as your paragraphs and the first line of each footnote. Again, be consistent! (Instructions: on on the lefthand side of the ruler, which is underneath the toolbars, there are two pyramids. Move the bottom pyramid along the ruler as far as you need, then move the top pyramid back to the left margin.)

5) Each first footnote in a chapter is "1" and so on. The first time a text (book, journal, article, etc.) is referred to in each chapter, it must be fully cited, even if you have cited the work in previous chapters. Think of each chapter as a new footnote ballgame! This is easiset to aaccomplish if each of your chapters is a separate file. (See discussion of file management in Turabian 13.13. Also, see Turabian 8.12.) However, if you're skilled with using continuous section breaks in MS-Word, you can cram all your chapters into one document if you really, really want to. I'm not sure I'd give myself that headache but, hey, whatever turns you on.

6) Be sure to abbreviate footnotes correctly. After the first full citation in each chapter, you must use either Ibid. (in the same place), when you are referring to the footnote directly above, or if not referring to the footnote directly above, give author’s last name and the page. For example:

¹⁰Smith, 209.

If you are citing an author within the chapter who has two or more books that you are citing, you will also have to repeat the title of the book in subsequent citations within the chapter. Don’t do this, however, if you are citing only one work by this author. Also, if you have two authors with the same last name, in addition to the last name give the first name and middle initial for clarity. Consider the following examples (in both cases you are citing only one text by Nathan in the chapter, and one text by Bhagwati and Patrick in the chapter):

7) Make sure that your Bibliography entries are complete, consistent, and correctly punctuated. Specific details can be found in Turabian Chapter 9 "Bibliographies," and Chapter 11. Note: division of sources in your Bibliography (books, journals, newspapers) is useful but not necessary.

8) Tables inserted in your text are self-sourced, not footnoted. The source, however, does appear in your Bibliography. If you have designed the Table yourself, do this:

9) In addition to consistent spacing, footnotes follow a precise form. In scholarly citation, even minute details like the presence or absence of a comma, are a very big deal! Although Turabian really gives every imaginable citation example, you may have something that doesn’t exactly "fit" her examples. Approximate it, or ask your reader what he/she would prefer. You're also welcome to come to the Writing Center for advice - we'll do our best to help you find a solution that will work, but you should always remember that your reader is the person to whom you'll ultimately need to "sell" your solution.

10) Sometimes you will want to explain something in your thesis, but to do so within the actual text would disrupt the flow of your material. Use a content note/footnote. This might not be a citation but rather an explanation. If you want to denote these explanatory footnotes in some particular way, talk with your reader about what formats you might employ.

11) Pay attention to how block quotations work. A block quotation consists of directly quoted material that is longer than four lines. Set this off from the rest of the text by indenting the entire quote four spaces (approximately 1/4 inch) from the left-hand margin. If the quote itself is a new paragraph, indent four more spaces (another 1/4 inch). See Turabian 5.30. No quotation marks are used and the beginning or end of the quotation. By blocking the material, you are indicating that it is a direct quote. For more specific details see 5.4 and 5.30-5.34.

12) At the beginning of your thesis, you must pay attention to certain details. Follow the title page format exactly as it is given to you in the Senior Thesis Syllabus. After the title page, place a blank page (this is for your reader’s convenience, and will be placed where the thesis director will sign off your thesis). The next page will be your Table of Contents. The Writing Center has a handout to explain the precise formatting of the cover page (as required by the Registrar). Stop by to grab one - it'll save lots of time.

13) Make sure that your Table of Contents corresponds with your actual thesis. If you use Chapter One in the ToC, then Chapter One should appear at the top of your actual Chapter One. If you use Chapter I, then it will be Chapter I in the body of your thesis. Pay attention to spacing and typography. Also, see Turabian 1.10-1.17, and look at 14.19 for a specific example. Chapter titles auto on template (centered). You choose 1, I or One to correspond to your Table of Contents.

14) Be sure to include a list of Tables/Illustrations/Figures directly following your Table of Contents. For Tables, see Turabian 1.24 and all of Chapter 6. For illustrations see 1.19-1.23. Also, see 14.29 for an example.

15) Want to thank your Mom and Dad? Praise your significant other for bearing with you through the tribulations of producing the thesis? Offer a shout-out to your homies and/or posse? Do this on a separate page after the blank page prior to your Table of Contents. Try not to be too sappy....

16) Use T-binding, not spiral binding. (As the Registrar notes, the key terminology for the printing industry is "black, velo-back binding with a clear cover." Another thing about binding: don’t expect to get it bound 20 minutes before the deadline! Some copy businesses require an appointment, so plan ahead!

17) Another common formatting error has to do with Bibliography citations. In your Bibliography, you need to list the large work. If you have cited an article/essay that appears in a compilation, it will be clear from your footnote. You don’t necessarily repeat the footnote in your Bibliography. Consider the following example:

Incorrect Bibliography citation:

Mostkoff, Aida, and Enrique C. Ochoa. "Complexities of Measuring the Food Situation Mexico: Supply versus Self-Sufficiency of Basic Grains, 1925-86." In Society and Economy in Mexico, ed. James W. Wilke, 117-146. Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles Latin American Center Publications, 1990.

(Yes, this Bibliography entry is a mess! It isn’t even indented correctly!)

Correct Bibliography citation:

However, it is okay to list the article/essay within the larger work in your Bibliography. Some readers may require you to do so. See Turabian 11.5-11.7.

18) The proper citation of material should not be considered an "afterthought". It is an integral part of writing a thesis and it is absolutely necessary that you scrupulously cite material that is not you own. Many students leave all of the citation business until the last minute. Be forewarned: it is a huge mistake to do so because correct citation, while easy to do, takes time. You may, for example, discover that have to run to the library to track down a page number. Don’t "make up" page numbers, and don’t make up dates for your Bibliography! This is poor scholarship at the least end of the spectrum, and at the worst, sloppy citation sometimes will indicate plagiarism. Your reader is likely to investigate all such cases. That's just a path you'd rather not go down.

19) How to do law cites (court cases): consult the Harvard Bluebook, aka A Uniform System of Citation. 13^th ed. Cambridge: Harvard Law Review Association, 1981. There is a copy in the Writing Center (B-32) that you can consult.

20) Citing material obtained through an information service can be confusing - happily, the publishing industry has figured out that there's a problem, and offers pretty good solutions. The new edition of Turabian is somewhat helpful, and the latest Chicago Manual of Style has some great help (Chicago and Turabian are increasingly synonymous these days - so the CMS is a great resource when Turabian fails you). When all else fails, consult the Columbia Guide to Online Style (availabe in the Writing Center), and use its suggestions as a plug-in solution for Turabian. Always in cases like this, stay in communication with your reader about what you're doing: as long as you and your reader both agree about your solution, you've got nothing to worry about.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Overall, remember that there is only one standard you need to meet: your citations must please your reader, and convince him/her to give you an A. The vast majority of thesis writers eventually find some source for which Turabian is silent on citation strategy. When this happens, talk to your reader. Talk to the tutors in the Writing Center. Both your reader and the tutors will be glad to help you find a reasonable solution. As long as your reader has "signed off" on your solution in advance, you're not going to have any problems.