Having a firm grasp of political history is essential when it comes to creating engaging, motivated, and factual content.
Having a firm grasp of political history is essential when it comes to creating engaging, motivated, and factual content. For those of you who are historically inclined, pulling out a reference to political history may come as naturally to you as punctuation; for everyone else, making a targeted reference to a niche historical event does not come as naturally.
The first step to charging your content with exciting and relevant historical insights is to familiarize yourself with the process of formally referencing history in a written work.
The key to referencing political history in a blog boils down to three elements:
A citation is where you physically reference the work you’ve chosen to sample from. Whenever you’re including a sample or selection from another author’s work, the proper and moral course is to cite them in your work. Without giving authors the credit they deserve, you’re not only doing them a disservice - you’re plagiarizing as well.
Citing sources gives your work authority and legitimacy. It shows to your readers that you’ve done your political research, and that you have the facts to back up your assertions. And when your work is cited someday in a review, or educational work - you’ll be thankful you took the time and effort to format your references properly.
Citations should be created any time you make a historical assertion, or when you’ve referenced some piece of information outside of your own work. Whether you’re quoting directly from a body of work, or simply referencing established fact - you must cite your sources.
The exceptions to the rule for making citations is when you reference common knowledge - such as the date of a country’s founding, or a public holiday. Of course, you are never required to cite your own work.
If you’ve ever turned in a paper - or have read an article on the internet - then you’re likely already familiar with the two most common forms of citations: MLA and APA. While these two formatting styles comprise the vast majority of cited works available on the internet, they are typically not found in political science research or legal papers.
The citation styles used most often in political science blogs and articles are the Chicago and APSA format. Learning the subtle differences between these two citation styles will enable you to decide which is the most appropriate to adopt for your blog.
The Chicago Manual of Style was initially developed to create a guide and baseline standards for proper source citation. It is now in its 16th edition, and is utilized by hundreds of thousands of writers and researchers across the country; including some of the most prestigious educational institutions, such as Perdue.
Chicago-Style Bibliographies must:
An example of a Chicago citation would look like this:
The American Political Science Association’s citation formatting is required for any author looking to be published by the organization; therefore, it is essential knowledge for researchers and political scientists to have.
ASPA references must be cited in the following format:
When it comes to managing your citations, you can never have too much help. If you’re in need of some quality citation and reference tools, look no further.
These citation tools make organizing your bibliography or reference page a breeze.
https://www.citationmachine.net
For more examples of Chicago and APSA formatting, visit these handy reference guides.
https://www.citationmachine.net/chicago
https://connect.apsanet.org/stylemanual/
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