Summary: Citing web sources

[Susan Kocher <sukoch -at- CATHER -dot- UNX -dot- SAS -dot- COM>]

 Thanks for all the useful info shared online and offline regarding
my question about how to cite information found on the ever-morphing
internet. It seems that, like the web itself, conventions for citing
electronic sources are still evolving. However, both MLA and APA have
come up with conventions, and other people have created their own
or tweaked existing conventions to fit their needs.

Also, Fionnula had this useful advice about how to clue in your readers
that the url given in a hardcopy biblio may not be up to date:

>I guess your updating problem depends on how you're publishing your own
>info. If you're also publishing online then you can use some sort of
>link-rot filter or checker that checks sites for changes etc. If you're
>publishing in a more static medium (paper, for example!) then you'll
>certainly want to heed the recommendation (at the site mentioned above) to
>include the date that you last visited the site. this will give your reader
>some indication of the how up-to-date the information is.


Here are the best web sources I have looked at:


1. Li Xiu and Nancy Crane have published a book on the subject. They also
provide some of the basics at this site:

http://www.uvm.edu/~ncrane/estyles/

2. Janet Walker's web sites were passed on to me by several people, and
other sites on writing and documenting sources have links to hers.
However, I could not get on to either this morning.

http://www.cas/usf/edu/english/walker/apa.html
http://www.cas/usf/edu/english/walker/mla.html

3. Keith Ivey, tech editor at the Editorial Eye (web journal) has a very
nice page that gives some background to the issues, problems with the
way Chicago Manual of Style and others have dealt with citing electronic
sources, as well as a list of links including the above.
I'd recommend a visit to:
http://www.eeicom.com/eye/utw/96aug.html

4. The Writing Center at the University of Wisconson also has a page
dedicated to electronic sources, with some examples:

http://www.wise.edu/writing/handbook/elecbysource.html

I could not get this url to work, so if you have the same problem,
just go to http://www.wise.edu/writing/
Click "Writer's Handbook" in the left frame, then "Documentation Styles,"
and finally the link to "citing electronic sources."

There you have it, more than you wanted to know! Thanks again, all.

Sue