Sample Footnotes and Bibliographic References for Cuban Missile Crisis Paper

 

Here are some sample footnotes from the Cuban Missile Crisis books we have been reading:

          1Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Mentor Books, 1969), 66-67.

          2Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 238-240.

Works such as Chang and Kornbluh’s, The Cuban Missile Crisis, which are essentially collections of documents or articles written by multiple authors, are handled somewhat differently than other sources. In such cases, the footnotes (but not the bibliography) cite each document individually. (The bibliography cites not each individual document but the book itself. See below.). You should cite the author and title of the document written at the top of each page in your note. For instance, if you were citing pages 40-41 and Document 7 in The Cuban Missile Crisis, your footnote would be:

          3Edward Lansdale, "Review of Operation Mongoose," Phase One, July 25, 1962, in Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 1998), 40-41.

A reference to page 20 and Document 4 in The Cuban Missile Crisis would be:

          4Minutes of first Operation Mongoose meeting with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, December 1, 1961, in Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 1998), 20.

Internet documents should be cited much like printed documents, except that you should include the URL (enclosed in pointed brackets: <URL>) and the date on which the document was accessed. If you need to break the URL between lines, break it at a point of punctuation such as a period, @ sign, or forward slash (/) and begin the new line with the letter or number which follows it in the URL. For instance, if you were citing Internet Document 25 from the History 325 Cuban Missile Crisis page (and you accessed the document on November 15, 1999), the reference would be:

          5Adlai S. Stevenson, "Letter from the Representative to the United Nations (Stevenson) to President Kennedy," in U. S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. 11: Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, <http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusXI/01_25.html>, November 15, 1999.

Footnotes that refer a second time to a book or article do not need to repeat all the information about the work (that would be a waste of space). When a note references the same book or article as the preceding footnote, scholars usually use a Latin abbreviation: Ibid. (meaning "in the same place"). Therefore, if you were citing from Robert Kennedy’s Thirteen Days in the sixth footnote, it would look this way:

          6Ibid., 100.

If a note references a work previously cited, but not the note immediately preceding it, use a shortened reference. For instance, if you wanted to cite Thirteen Days in the seventh note, your footnote would look like this:

          7Kennedy, Thirteen Days, 18-19.

If you put your footnotes at the bottom of the page, be sure to separate them from the main text with a line (one way to do this is to hit the underline key 20 times).

Here are some sample bibliographic references:

Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Mentor Books, 1969.

May, Ernest R. and Zelikow, Philip D., eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Chang, Laurence and Kornbluh, Peter, eds. The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. Revised Ed. New York: New Press, 1998.

U. S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963. Vol. 11: Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath. <http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusXI/index.html>. November 15, 1999.

 

Summary of differences between footnote and bibliographic references:

  • Footnotes present the author’s name in natural order; bibliographies cite the author’s last name first.

  • In footnote references, the first line is indented. In bibliographic references, hanging indention is used.

  • Footnote references cite the page numbers in the work which are used; bibliographic references generally do not.

  • Each footnote reference is punctuated as though it were a single sentence. The footnote ends, like a sentence does, with a period. All punctuation marks within the footnote are the same punctuation marks one would find within a sentence. Each bibliographic reference is punctuated as though it were a paragraph. Each element of the reference (author’s name, title, information about volume or edition, and facts of publication) is punctuated as a separate sentence within that paragraph.

| This page was last updated on 12/3/99 | Return to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 | Site Map |

Dr. Harold D. Tallant, Department of History, Georgetown College
400 East College Street, Georgetown, KY 40324, (502) 863-8075
E-mail: htallant@georgetowncollege.edu