Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness: Writing and Citing

The Census Bureau states: The U.S. Census Bureau has no specific style recommendation for citing information found on our website. So, use the other guides on this page, especially the link to the University of Nebraska site, to help you choose the elements you'll need for a citation. Sometimes you'll be lucky, and the resource itself may give you a standardized citation that you can then adapt to APA, MLA, etc.

Citing the STATISTICAL ABSTRACTS U.S. SUGGESTED CITATION [adapt to your citation style]:

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010 (129th Edition) Washington, DC, 2009; <http://www.census.gov/statab/www/>.

Citing materials beyond books and journals can be difficult. I have compiled a number of suggestions in this document. This should help you be aware of the components of the sources you need to gather in order to make your citations accurate in CONTENT. Be sure, however, to make the citation STYLE fit your APA or MLA choice.

PDF link forthcoming

Whether inputting your citations manually, using EndNote or another bibliographic management application or an online 'fill-in/format' process, you have to have a  basic understanding of the elements you need to gather, and probably some cheat sheets. Here are some to get you started.

One of the most challenging aspects: Agency as Author: almost all books and journal articles have one or more personal authors and those are the print and electronic sources students use most often. A website page should have an identifiable author [be cautious about using those that do not]. However, with U.S., State, International, etc. agencies, whether the Department of Education or a sub-agency, many reports are written by the agency itself and no one person or persons is cited as the author. Here is what you do:

You have found a document entitled Dietary Intake and Dietary Attitudes Among Food Stamp Participants and Other Low-Income Individuals - September 2000 at http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/nutrition_education/research.htm 

1. Identify the main unit; ie the biggest. For example: U.S. Department of Agriculture.
2. Identify if you are looking at a page or document produced by a sub-agency or even a sub, sub-agency; Food and Nutrition Service.
3. The report itself is a PDF file and you have to open it to see if there is additional information you'll need. You choose to open the Executive Summary link http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora/MENU/Published/NutritionEducation/Files/FSPDietSum.htm and you find no personal author/s listed.
4. OR you open the complete report which turns out to be 225 pages and has a title page with people's names on it at http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora/MENU/Published/NutritionEducation/Files/FSPDiet.pdf - and there are some identifying numbers [Contract Number; MPR Reference No.] - AND it turns out that the report was submitted to the USDA from an organization, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. - ALL of these factors come into play in getting the correct information into the citation format!
   

If you're researching this topic, you'll be using government documents and other types of materials. The handout on this page from the University of Nebraska shows you what citation elements you need. But, how do you enter those in EndNote to make them come out correctly?

EndNote Help on Entering Corporate Authors

[1] When entering corporate authors, put a comma after the name:

 U.S. Department of Agriculture,

 Apple Computer Inc.,

This ensures that the entire name is treated as a first name, so no name manipulation will be applied.

[2] If your corporate author name includes a comma in the name itself, use two commas in place of the first comma:

University of California,, Irvine

EndNote treats this as a last name followed by a blank first name.  Then,  everything after the (blank) first name is appended, including a second comma in the name.  The formatted result is the corporate name with the commas in place.