Citation of a Web Resource (and other e-Resources): Advice

References to electronic media (especially websites) pose particular problems to footnoters. It is in the nature of internet publications that they are repeatedly revised or move location. In order to circumvent these difficulties, citations to internet publications should include not only the typical information found in citations (author, title, dates), but also the particular URL (uniform resource locator) of the cited web-page and the date on which it was read by you.

An ideal reference to a website would include the following information:

  1. Author's name (in full, followed by a comma)
  2. Title of article/webpage/item (in full, in single quotation marks, followed by a comma)
  3. The title of the complete website/resource/work (in full, in italics)
  4. [Where relevant] Volume and issue number
  5. Date of publication (in brackets; in the form 31 August 2012)
  6. URL or DOI of the resource (in full, in angle brackets)
  7. Date on which you accessed the site (in square brackets, in the form 31 August 2012, preceded by the word 'accessed')
  8. Location of passage cited (in parentheses)

An ideal reference to a personal website might look like this:

Stephen Alsford, 'History of Medieval Lynn: Origins and Early Growth', Medieval English Towns (2012) <http://users.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/lynn1.html> [accessed 31 August 2012] (para. 4).

Similarly, an ideal reference to a electronic journal might look like this:

Ivan Keta, '“The Hitchcock Film to End All Hitchcock Films”: Intertextuality and the Nature of the World in North by Northwest', Common Room, 15.1 (2012), <http://departments.knox.edu/engdept/commonroom/Volume15.1/Ivan_Keta.html> [accessed 31 August 2012] (para. 2).

Obviously, these are two ideal websites to cite, as they provide full and detailed information. You will encounter websites with substantially fewer details (many sites are anonymous, untitled, and provide no publication info). If you encounter such a site, ask yourself first whether it is an appropriate resource to be citing in your work. If you determine it is, provide as many of the above details as you can as well as any other details which would help your reader to track down your source.

Note: Citing E-Books

We would suggest that tablet e-book editions (such as for Kindle) do not offer a good basis for scholarship. However, if for some reason you need to cite an e-book edition, include the format and any page locator information provided with it (a section title or a chapter or other number, such as location or percentage). The following example illustrates this point:

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin, 2007), Kindle edn, location 2684.

Exercise 1: A Web Resource >>>