@marykathleenb86 @leanne I’ve created a monster! In hindsight, trying to use a general one-size citation for web articles was probably not the greatest idea, but now all the chapters have that, so I guess I am more concerned about consistency than adherence to Chicago. For books, I italicized. Where there was just a website and URL noted, I italicized. I don’t remember many journals being cited, but yes, after checking Chicago, I guess we should italicize those. When there was a website within a larger citation of a web article, I did not italicize.
@lizmays I’ve corrected the endnotes for the “Customer Discovery” chapter. They’re all formatted like this:
Firstname Lastname, “Title of Web Page,” Publishing Organization or Name of Website, publication date and/or access date if available, URL.
Or like this:
Website, URL.
Regarding the question from @marykathleenb86 about journal/magazine titles: I did italicize them in the “Customer Discovery” chapter, following the Chicago Manual of Style rules. In the “Bio” section (which is all in italics), I changed them to Roman. I hope that was correct.
Please let me know if you need anything else! 
@lizmays Hi Liz, Sorry I didn’t see your earlier message! I think my browser is feeling a bit groggy this morning. Regarding italics, I was referring to Journal/Magazine titles in the text of the article, as well as in the endnotes.
Could you clarify what you mean by “a website within a larger citation of a web article” and maybe provide an example? Sorry to be so dense!
@leanne Thanks! This works. As we find time, we can use this as the standard and clean up the other chapters. Thanks to both of you for your expertise and input on this point.
@leanne Example of such a citation would be:
Jan Schaffer, “A new kind of activist journalism: When finding solutions are part of journalists’ job, too.” NiemanLab. June 4, 2013. http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/06/a-new-kind-of-activist-journalism-when-finding-solutions-are-part-of-journalists-job-too/. ↵
NiemanLab is a website, not a magazine or journal, in my view, though I suppose that is subjective.
@lizmays Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’m still confused, though, because the format in this example doesn’t seem to be the same the one from a previous message:
Firstname Lastname, “Title of Web Page,” Publishing Organization or Name of Website in italics, publication date and/or access date if available, URL.
Are we using periods or commas? What exactly should we be italicizing?
I’m so sorry (and embarrassed) to ask so many questions. I just want to be sure I’m doing things correctly according to the style chosen for this project.
Hi @leanne and @marykathleenb86 I am sorry this has been so confusing. You have helped me see that I’ve really made a mistake in trying to prescribe a generic style here. If you want to tell us what these should be according to Chicago, that would probably be best. No need to fix them all. I don’t want you to have to keep correcting this–you’ve done so much. Just give us maybe a few examples that have an author, web article title, website name, publication date and URL (which is what the majority of the book’s citations contain) and tell us how you would handle them. We can go about retrofitting these and the others in the book while it’s in beta.
@lizmays I think the format provided by OWL at Purdue – in the link that @marykathleenb86 provided (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/05/) – is the best way to go. (I’ve been browsing the instructions in the actual Chicago Manual of Style regarding websites, blogs, etc., but they seem to leave a lot up to “editorial discretion” and are not that helpful)
When formatting websites, OWL advises using commas instead of periods except at the end, italicizing the website name, and capitalizing titles according to “headline style” (8.157; see also http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/capitalizing-titles). Basic format:
- Firstname Lastname, “Title of Web Page,” Publishing Organization or Name of Website in Italics, publication date and/or access date if available, URL.
So, for example,
- Jan Schaffer, “A New Kind of Activist Journalism: When Finding Solutions Are Part of Journalists’ Job, Too,” NiemanLab, June 4, 2013, http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/06/a-new-kind-of-activist-journalism-when-finding-solutions-are-part-of-journalists-job-too/.
Endnotes for books and journals (whether print or online) are slightly different, but OWL has instructions for all of them.
I do know that (according to Chicago), books, magazines, journals, and blogs should be italicized in-text, but websites should be in roman, without quotation marks. This website (https://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/EDU/Department2.aspx?id=46698) is a very handy reference.
Thoughts?
This citation format sounds good (and highlights some of the reasons I actually tried to create a generic style–I did not find a lot of meaningful guidance in the 15th edition, and had let my subscription lapse).
One note: I don’t know how relevant (or how much we can abide by) the distinctions Chicago draws between citations, footnotes and endnotes here due to the software limitations as well as a few other factors. Pressbooks generates multiple outputs from a single source. So whatever we do for citations will display as footnotes at the end of the chapter on the web book and at the end of the chapter on the ebook. We have choices for the print version, but they look best as chapter endnotes. We cannot do end-of-book endnotes, nor would we want to because the content is designed to be used as modules, individually. Given these limitations, I would be interested in what you suggest.
@lizmays I agree that having a generic style makes sense for the most part; I think perhaps there was just some confusion about the punctuation, etc. of the generic style. (Sidenote: Chicago’s 16th edition isn’t much better. I’m hoping for some more useful guidance in the 17th edition, coming out this fall.)
I must admit that I’m not very familiar with Pressbooks. Generally speaking, my personal preference for print books is to use footnotes because they’re the most readily accessible (from the reader’s perspective). For this book, I think it makes sense to use end-of-chapter endnotes for both the print and online versions to ensure consistency of style. I agree that it doesn’t make sense to use end-of-book notes given the module-style content and the fact that each chapter is written by a different author. (Also, as a reader I usually find end-of-book notes rather inconvenient.) The OWL at Purdue (such a great resource!) uses the same formatting for endnotes and footnotes, so if we use that as our style guide, there shouldn’t be any issues.
It sounds like we’re more or less on the same page?
@lizmays @marykathleenb86 I forgot to mention that OWL/Chicago has a different format for blog entries:
- J. Robert Lennon, “How Do You Revise?,” Ward Six (blog), September 16, 2010 (8:39 a.m.), http://wardsix.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-do-you-revise.html.
It seems that here, the blog title is not italicized, and (blog) is placed after the title (unless the word “blog” is part of the blog title). And a time stamp is added to the date.
I wouldn’t have a problem with formatting blogs and websites the same way. (This is what I did for the chapter I was working on.) What do you two think?
@leanne Yes! We are on the same page with this approach. I apologize for the missteps here.
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@leanne I think we should format blogs and websites the same way. In our world of journalism, there is NOT a distinction. And to call a website “just a blog” is almost pejorative when it could be a news outlet. I think we should not try to draw what will become very subjective blurry lines here.
@lizmays Makes perfect sense to me!
@lizmays No worries!
@leanne Thank you!
@lizmays @leanne I’ve read all your comments and am in agreement! I can update my endnotes tomorrow morning. Thanks for figuring this out.
@marykathleenb86 Thanks! And thanks for pointing us to the OWL website. I haven’t used it in a while, but it’s still awesome.
@lizmays Hi Liz. My chapters, including the endnotes, are ready for your review. Let me know if you need anything else.
@marykathleenb86 Thank you! Will take a look this week and let you know. Thanks again!
