How to cite this document my mom sent me

By waterboysh on Mon, 09/21/2020 - 10:27

Forums

Hello everyone, first time poster. I have a Word Document that my mom sent me. It just has random facts about her aunt on it. Some of it is just information "she knows" or was told by my grandma, and some of it is information she has collected over the years. Nothing sourced in any way. She doesn't know where the information specifically comes from.

She is going to send me similar documents for other family members, so I want to create a template I can use and just swap out the correct info.

Submitted byEEon Mon, 09/21/2020 - 15:09

waterboysh, in Chapter 3's section for "Privately Held Materials," see 3.29 "Diaries, Journals & Authored Manuscript." What you describe would be an authored manuscript, rather than a document; and it's a manuscript held in private possession by you.

Submitted bywaterboyshon Thu, 09/24/2020 - 08:45

Since we're dealing with names and places where people live, and because I wanted to create a template anyway, this is what I came up with

Mom's Name, "Document title", page (if more than 1), MS, (where she lives); privately held by Me, [my address,] city, state, year owned. [provenance, description, etc.]

 I'm still pretty new to this so I'm open to suggestions.

Submitted byEEon Thu, 09/24/2020 - 08:51

You're a fast learner, waterboys. Just two tweaks:

1. Include the date or year of the manuscript in the parentheses.

2. Don't use italics. In the citation world, italics means "this is published and it's a standalone publication."

So add the year like this?

Mom's Name, "Document title", page (if more than 1), MS, (where she lives, year compiled); privately held by Me, [my address,] city, state, year owned. [provenance, description, etc.]

I think it only showed in italics because I put it in a quote, but I didn't know doing that was going to change the formatting.

Submitted byEEon Sat, 09/26/2020 - 09:30

waterbosh, following the model for "Diaries, Journals & Authored Manuscripts" at EE 3.29, reference note 1, would give us this:

Mom's Name, "Document title" (MS, where written, when written), page; privately held by Me, [my address,] city, state, year owned. [provenance, description, etc.].

This follows the same pattern as citing a book, except for (a) punctuation of title and (b) addition of the notation "MS":

Author's Name, Book Title (where published, when published), page.