However the systems for citing ancient works or medieval manuscripts are actually older than consistent page numbers, though they do not reach back into antiquity or even really much into the Middle Ages. Of course this breaks down a little with mass-market fiction books that are often printed in multiple editions with inconsistent pagination (thus the endless frustration with trying to cite anything in A Song of Ice and Fire the fan-made chapter-based citation system for a work without numbered or uniquely named chapters 2 is, I must say, painfully inadequate.) but in a scholarly rather than wiki-context, one can just pick a specific edition, specify it with the facts of publication and use those page numbers. Consequently if you can give the book, the edition (where necessary), the publisher and a page number, any reader seeing your citation can notionally go get that edition of the book and open to the very page you were looking at and see exactly what you saw. In particular, we publish books in codices (that is, books with pages) with numbered pages which are typically kept constant in multiple printings (including being kept constant between soft-cover and hardback versions). Consequently its citation system is built for the facts of how modern publishing works. Still, the Chicago Manual of Style – the standard style guide and citation system for historians working in the United States – was first published only in 1906. Instead most modern citation systems in use for modern books go back at most to the 1800s, though these are often standardizations of systems which might go back a bit further still. Pre-modern authors will, of course, allude to or reference other works (although ancient Greek and Roman writers have a tendency to flex on the reader by omitting the name of the author, often just alluding to a quote of ‘the poet’ where ‘the poet’ is usually, but not always, Homer), but they did not generally have systems of citation as we do. The first thing that needs to be noted here is that systems of citation are for the most part a modern invention. And you may ask, “What gives? Why two systems?” So let’s talk about that. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road (1972)), 1 but ancient works get these strange almost code-like citations (Xen. In particular, you all have no doubt noticed that I generally cite modern works by the author’s name, their title and date of publication (e.g. And here is Ollie being his normal cute self, at play with one of his toys.įor this week’s musing I wanted to talk a bit about citation systems. Still we’re going to keep working out way through Total Generalship and then from there hit some of the topics that my patrons in the ACOUP Senate have voted for. Fireside this week! I expect to lean a bit more on Firesides than in the next few months as I am hoping to use the summer to make progress on my book project, which of course is going to impact the speed with which I can deliver you all the 5000-9000 word essays that tend to make up the big feature Collection posts.
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