History Style Guide
This is a quick overview of the basic information you will need to write most history assignments. For more detailed advice or to book an appointment for writing support, contact the Writing Centre.
As students of history, we reconstruct the past based on first-hand knowledge of the people who lived during the period we study and scholarly assessments built up by generations of historians looking at the past. These are what we call Primary and Secondary sources.
Primary sources are those written or produced close to the time of the person, event, or trend being studied. These sources can vary widely and include government records, personal papers, media accounts, works of fiction, images, and artifacts.
Secondary Sources are the books and articles produced by historians who analyze historical events and trends based on primary source research and building on the scholarship of other historians. These sources are peer-reviewed by other scholars for accuracy and quality, and they include citations to provide references for their sources.
Citations are about crediting the primary and secondary sources that you will use to build your argument. They are a way to demonstrate how you are using evidence, and they can be evaluated to determine whether your argument is sound. Citations are the best way to highlight all of the research you have conducted, and provide a blueprint of your argument.
Citing is also an important way to acknowledge the ideas and work of other people—to present other people’s ideas and words as your own is an academic offence that goes against Laurier’s student code of conduct, and can be easily avoided by providing citations to your sources.
The following examples illustrate the streamlined citation style for the history department. They are inspired by The Chicago Manual of Style. Here you will see examples of how to format a footnote/endnote. At the end you will see how your bibliography will look.
After you cite a source in full for the first time, if you use it again you only need to list the last name, short form title, and page numbers in each subsequent note, as in the following examples.
How to Cite a Book
1. Christina Han, Korea around 1900: The Paintings of Gisan (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2005), 44.
2. Han, Korea around 1900, 42.
How to Cite a Book Chapter
1. Suzanne Zeller, "Recalibrating Empire: Humboldtian Climatology in the Reports of the Palliser and Hind Expeditions to British North America’s Great North West, 1857-58," in Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas, eds. Vera M. Kutzinski, Ottmar Ette, and Laura Dassow Walls (Berlin: Verlag Walter Frey, 2012), 70-116.
2. Zeller, "Recalibrating Empire,” 75.
How to Cite a Journal Article
1. Jeff Grischow, “‘I Nearly Lost My Work’: Chance Encounters, Legal Empowerment and the Struggle for Disability Rights in Ghana,” Disability and Society, 30, no. 1 (2015): 104.
2. Grischow, “‘I Nearly Lost my Work,’” 105.
How to Cite an Electronic Resource
1. Eva Plach, “Rabies in Interwar Poland,” Sniffing the Past: Dogs and History, May 2016, https://sniffingthepast.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/rabies-in-interwar-poland/.
2. Plach, “Rabies in Interwar Poland,” n.p.
[note: n.p. indicates that there are no specific pages to cite for this reference]
3. Thomas Hibernicus, Manipulus florum, Chris Nighman, ed., accessed July 17, 2017, http://manipulusflorum.com.
4. Hibernicus, Manipulus florum, n.p.
How to Cite an Item in an Archival Collection
For archival items, there is quite a bit of variation according to the type of archive. In general, you tend to cite from most specific information to the general archival source.
1. Lieutenant-Colonel J. Bibeau, War Diary of Le Regiment de Maisonneuve, July-August 1944, Department of National Defence Fonds.
2. Bibeau, War Diary, 8 July 1944.
Bibliography
Bibeau, Lieutenant-Colonel J. War Diary of Le Regiment de Maisonneuve, July-August 1944, RG 24-C-3 Volume 15188, Department of National Defence Fonds, Laurier Military History Archive, Waterloo.
Grischow, Jeff. “‘I Nearly Lost My Work’: Chance Encounters, Legal Empowerment and the Struggle for Disability Rights in Ghana.” Disability and Society 30, no. 1 (2015): 101-113.
Han, Christina. Korea around 1900: The Paintings of Gisan. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2005.
Hibernicus, Thomas. Manipulus florum. Chris Nighman, ed. Accessed July 17, 2017. http://manipulusflorum.com.
Plach, Eva. “Rabies in Interwar Poland,” Sniffing the Past: Dogs and History, May 2016. Accessed August 25, 2017, https://sniffingthepast.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/rabies-in-interwar-poland/.
Zeller, Suzanne. "Recalibrating Empire: Humboldtian Climatology in the Reports of the Palliser and Hind Expeditions to British North America’s Great North West, 1857-58." In Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas, edited by Vera M. Kutzinski, Ottmar Ette, and Laura Dassow Walls, 70-116. Berlin: Verlag Walter Frey, 2012.
The general principles outlined here should help you format most of your citations. However, citation styles are always changing. The key is to chose a recognized style, be consistent, and supply enough information. When in doubt, contact your instructor!