Standards of Documentation: How to Write a Good Footnote

Speaker: Jennifer Eichman

Venue: 1213 Chengjun Court, Zijingang Campus

Abstract: This seminar will explore in great depth the use of academic footnotes and their relationship to research and documentation. What information belongs in the body of an article or chapter and what information should be relegated to a footnote? Are footnotes only for documenting sources? What types of explanations might one fruitfully add to a footnote? Moreover, what constitutes good academic documentation? Do scholarly standards for documenting classical Chinese sources constantly change? What are the different methods of documentation? What do academics think? What do publishers accept? We will discuss some modern standards, but we will also look at the work of two great Chinese scholars, the historian Chen Yuan 陳垣 (1880-1971) and the encyclopedist Chen Yuanlong 陳元龍 (1652-1736) and discuss what the standards of citation were in their time. Our brief discussion of Chen Yuanlong  and Chen Yuan should help sharpen our analytical skills as we think comparatively about standards of documentation in Chinese and Western journals.