Forms of notes

Editors disagree about which form of notes is most useful to the reader, and different forms are considered more suitable for different scholarly disciplines.

• Footnotes are the most traditional. They appear at the bottom of the page on which they are cited, and have the advantage of immediacy; that is, the reader need not page back and forth searching for a source. Footnotes are easily inserted when using a word processor. When using a typewriter, footnotes appear in numerical order, indented, in smaller type than the text (usually 10-point), single-spaced, under a short ruled line drawn three centimeters from the lower left-hand margin of the page.
• Endnotes are organized in the same way as footnotes, but appear in a list at the end of an article, book, or chapter. They appear in numerical order, single-spaced and indented. Endnotes are becoming more common in scholarly writing because they do not “interrupt” the reader. In other words, they do not affect the appearance of the text by chopping it up with different typefaces, and the reader is free to decide which notes are worth looking up.
• Parenthetical references and reference lists are preferred by some fields of scholarship, such as the natural and social sciences. Authors writing about Christian education or history may occasionally use this style. A more complete description of this form of notes is in Section 4.

 

Bogoslovskie razmyshleniia/Theological Reflections prefers footnotes. Standard treatment for footnotes, endnotes, and parenthetical references is given below.

 

Preparing notes on books

When citing books in footnotes or endnotes, the following information is given in this order:

• Full name of author(s) or editor(s) as it appears on the title page.
• Full title of the book in italics, including subtitle.
• Full name of editor(s), translator(s), or compiler(s), if any.
• Edition, if other than the first.
• Number of volumes, if any.
• Facts of publication: city (and state or province, if published in the U.S. or Canada and the city is not well known), publisher, and year of publication.
• Volume number, if any.
• Page number(s).

 

2.3.1. Author’s or editor’s name:

Give the full name of the author(s) or editor(s) as it appears on the title page,followed by a comma. Generally in American usage initials are not used if the full name is known, or unless the author’s name appears that way on the title page. There is a period and a space between two initials.

 

Elaine Storkey William Sanford La Sor

Rudolph Bultmann F. F. Bruce

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S. V. Sannikov

 

For a work by two or three authors, give the full names in the order that they appear on the title page, separating the names of two authors with and, and those of three authors with commas, the last comma followed by and. If there are more than three authors, cite the name of the first author given on the title page and add et al. or and others.

 

Ruth A. Tucker and Walter L. Liefeld

Louis Fienberg, Julius Horwitz, and Moses Horwitz

Cornelius J. Dyck et al ., eds. OR Cornelius J. Dyck and others, eds.

 

For a work by a pre-modern author, use the standard English spelling of the name. Consult the Biographical Names section in any good English dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

 

Aristotle (not Aristote or Aristoteles)

John Chrysostom (not Ioann Golden Mouth)

Augustine or Augustin (not Augustinus)

Jerome (not Hieronymus)

 

Title of book

Give the title and subtitle (if any) of books in italics. Always capitalize the first and last words in a title, including the first word after the colon in a subtitle. All other words should be capitalized except articles, prepositions, to used as part of an infinitive, and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for):

 

The Divorce Myth

The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17

Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?

The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know about the Orthodox Church

Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale