Political Science Research Guide

Research papers generally build on the work of previous writers and researchers.  Whenever you write a paper and use the material of another author, you must document that source.  Documentation credits the author and publisher of the original work and provides the necessary information for readers to consult the same sources. 

The Chicago and Turabian styles are basically the same. Kate L. Turabian designed her guide specifically for students and researchers when she worked as dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago for 30 years. Her ‘Turabian’ guide is based on the University of Chicago Press’s Manual of Style and focuses on the rules most important for students’ papers and other research not intended for publication.

Many of the samples in this guide are from the Chicago Manual of Style (16^th edition, 2006). If needing to cite specifically in the Turabian style, please consult that particular manual and/or the electronic resources listed.

RefWorks allows you to manage your research and format citations. Use the web-based software to: create a personal database to keep track of your research articles, documents, websites, etc.; import citation information from a variety of resources into your database; generate a bibliography in a variety of styles (e.g., Chicago); and add in-text citations to a paper. You can also upload and annotate documents.

At the Mansfield Library:

The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Fifteenth Edition. Online.

The Chicago Manual of Style. Fifteenth Ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. At the Reference Desk (main floor)

Turabian, Kate, et al. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Seventh Ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. At the Reference Desk (main floor)

Online Guides:

Chicago Manual of Style (do a catalog TITLE search)

Bedford St. Martin's

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

University of Wisconsin Writing Center

• If an article does not list page numbers, such as a full-text HTML article from an online database, use a “descriptive locator” such as a heading or section name following the word under.
• For anything inserted within the quotation that is not part of the original text brackets, rather than parentheses, should be used.
• If a word is misspelled or used incorrectly in the original text, leave it uncorrected in the quotation with a bracketed [sic] following it.
• If any word or number of words is/are omitted from the original text in the quotation, an ellipsis in parentheses (…) must be in place of the missing text.
• To use a quotation from more than one author include both authors’ last names, or for many authors, the primary author’s last name followed by the phrase “et al.”.
• Even if information from a source is paraphrased, it still must be cited.