Footnotes and Endnotes: Format

Footnotes are notes that are placed at the bottom of the page in a research paper. Endnotes are notes which are gathered together at the end of the paper. Use one form or the other; the format for both is the same. Notes are numbered consecutively.

The complete citation is provided the first time a source is cited.

Subsequent references can be abbreviated by providing only the author's last name followed by a page reference.

If there is more than one author with the same surname or more than one source by the same author, then subsequent references will also contain an abbreviated form of the title of the article or the book.

The Latin abbreviation Ibid. can be used to refer to the previous source. When used by itself it refers to the source and page(s) to which reference was last made. Ibid. followed by a page number refers to the previous source but a different page.

A few examples follow:

1. Milovan Djilas, Tito: The Story from Inside (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980), 58-60. [The complete citation is provided the first time a source is cited.]
2. Ibid. [A reference to pages 58-60 of the Djilas book.]
3. Ibid., 61.[A reference to page 61 of the Djilas book.]
4. Sabrina Petra Ramet, "War in the Balkans," Foreign Affairs (Fall 1992): 79.
5. Djilas, 85.  [There has been an intervening reference, so an abbreviated form of the citation is used in this instance to refer to the Djilas book.]
6. Ibid.  [A reference to Djilas, page 85.]
7. Sabrina Petra Ramet, "The Push for National Purity," Newsweek (3 August 1992):36.  [A second article by Ramet.]
8. Ibid.  [A reference to Ramet's second article.]
9. Ramet,"War," 80.  [A reference to Ramet's first article.]