Citing Kindle text in formal papers

[weatherman]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

The location isn't changing... you're just seeing more locations per "page" (screen). Location 1266 still points to the same spot.

When you cite something in an academic paper, you don't cite the exact "position," you cite the page. And you'd have to do that on the Kindle too, unless you wanted to try and figure out exactly what section you were citing because the Kindle doesn't display the section, it displays the range of sections displayed on a page.

I guess you could find the range, estimate what you thought was the section that you wanted, and then put that in the search field and see if you were right, and then back and forth until you got it right, and then do the same thing for the end of the section you're looking to cite, but that seems overly complicated. Unless there's some other way of determining the section that I don't know about...

[HarryT]

How does one "cite" a web site, given that web content can change arbitrarily?

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How does one "cite" a web site, given that web content can change arbitrarily?

Varies by style being used, but generally you cite the paragraph number for a direct quote. Pain in the ass for longer stuff as you basically have to print it out and label paragraph numbers.

I've only ran into it once with an old Atlantic Monthly article that's a seminal piece in my area of study that I've not yet been able to track down a hard copy--just the archived web version which isn't a PDF of the original article with page numbers etc. but just an html page of text.

[weatherman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How does one "cite" a web site, given that web content can change arbitrarily?

Generally you cite the URL and the date visited.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by weatherman

Generally you cite the URL and the date visited.

That's what goes in the references at the end (along with title and author of course).

In text, if it's a direct quote for the the in-text parenthetical citation you list Author and year along with the paragraph number where you'd put the page number for a direct quote from a print source. If it's not a direct quote, then it just gets the author and year like anything else

[thorn]

if you really need to cite pages, you might try seeing if you can find the desired passage in the same edition on google books, by keyword searching, and using that page number.

mla has just updated the 'handbook' to account for internet resources, but i don't know whether they've also dealt with e-book citations. if i had to really 'wing' it, i might actually note the percentage of the way through the book, rather than the 'location'. or both percentage and location. it seems important to make the citation findable for users of either format, and 'how far into the book', percentagewise, might be helpful to get a hard-copy owner into the ballpark.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by weatherman

When you cite something in an academic paper, you don't cite the exact "position," you cite the page. And you'd have to do that on the Kindle too, unless you wanted to try and figure out exactly what section you were citing because the Kindle doesn't display the section, it displays the range of sections displayed on a page.

I guess you could find the range, estimate what you thought was the section that you wanted, and then put that in the search field and see if you were right, and then back and forth until you got it right, and then do the same thing for the end of the section you're looking to cite, but that seems overly complicated. Unless there's some other way of determining the section that I don't know about...

Sure, but I think citing the range of locations is close enough. At most you'd have to read a couple of paragraphs further to find the right "place".

The biggest issue is that, of course, the person reviewing your citations may not have a Kindle to refer to. But then that's always been a known way to scam people on citations; few are ever checked, especially if they're in a suitably obscure location or in a foreign language.

[dmaul1114]

Yeah, it's just going to be unclear for a long time to come most likely.

If it's just for a class paper or something I'd just ask the professor who you should cite it.

If it's for something like a scholarly journal publication, I'd just e-mail the managing editor and ask how to deal with it since it's not going to be covered in the journals style guide most likely. They should either tell you how to cite it (or simply tell you to track down a copy of the physical book to get the paper page number).

Being an academic, that's one of many issues that keeps me from being interested in ebooks for academic works yet. I use ebooks pretty much soley for leisure reading, but will just buy/check out from the University Library any academic books related to my research/publications.

[phenomshel]

What I've done in the past is cite the original book as the source, not the electronic version. When I used "Through Time and the Valley" by John Erickson as a source, for example, I got it through Google Books. But the citation I gave was the original print version.

[Slow_hand]

Ran across this link while checking some things for the Library:
http://library.csus.edu/guides/bradleya/MLA.htm . It gives guidance for any number of electronic sources.

Electronic Book Citation from netLibrary - MLA Style

Helliwell, John F. How Much Do National Borders Matter?.
Washington, D.C.:Brookings Institution Press, 1998. 3 Apr. 2001.
<http://www.netLibrary.com>
Format
Author. Title of the Book. Place of Publication, Publisher, and Date of Publication. Edition(if available) Access Date. <URL>

[pwjone1]

Well, I hate to say this, but I think most in academia are going to opt for citations in their original (i.e. page instead of Kindle location) format. Basically citations are mostly checked or referenced by going to or calling a library, and looking at the printed edition. Very rarely would someone buy it, to check the reference. And since most academic environments don't have a lot of Kindles (PDF support would have gone a long way towards fixing that, more reasonable prices on the Text Books, bigger screen the rest of the way), unlikely they'll have the combination of a Kindle and the .AZW to check the reference. Remember, you're trying to make it easy on the reader, not the other way around.

[cerement]

Originally Posted by weatherman

When you cite something in an academic paper, you don't cite the exact "position," you cite the page.

You don't cite Shakespeare or Bible verses by the page, you cite by position. We already have a cite format for "reflowable text" (albeit aimed at verse, not prose). We came up with citations for literature many decades ago when every typesetter would repaginate a book to create their own edition. It doesn't take that much effort to change from [Act, Scene, Line] to [Act, Scene, Sentence], or from [Book, Chapter, Line] to [Book, Chapter, Sentence] ...

Something along the lines of [Chapter, Paragraph, Sentence] should be perfectly fine for anything other than Finnegan's Wake ...

[weatherman]

Originally Posted by cerement

It doesn't take that much effort to change from [Act, Scene, Line] to [Act, Scene, Sentence], or from [Book, Chapter, Line] to [Book, Chapter, Sentence] ...

Something along the lines of [Chapter, Paragraph, Sentence] should be perfectly fine for anything other than Finnegan's Wake ...

Maybe I don't understand how the pagination works on the Kindle. Are the numbers at the bottom lines, sentences, or paragraphs? Everyone keeps using the word "section" which is a little vague in this case.

[cerement]

Originally Posted by weatherman

Maybe I don't understand how the pagination works on the Kindle. Are the numbers at the bottom lines, sentences, or paragraphs? Everyone keeps using the word "section" which is a little vague in this case.

On the Kindle, since the page count and page location would change everytime you changed the font size, the number marks locations which are fixed points throughout the text (every so many bytes or something like that) and thus will never change regardless of font size. The main problem is that there is no direct correlation between a "location" in a file and a page in any particular edition of a book (and even with paper books, you still have to cite publisher and edition, paperbacks will have different page numbering than hardbacks, Everyman will have different numbering than Penguin, etc.)

"Section" is a reference to those texts that actually use "sections" to divide segments of a book, if a book has chapters but no sections, you would cite the chapter and not the section.

Originally Posted by MobileRead Wiki

A: Kindle shows your numeric location in what you are reading, so you can easily find a particular passage or reference it to your friends. Locations are the digital answer to page numbers. Since you can change the text size on Kindle, the page numbers would change too, but with locations, you can be confident that you return to the same place every time regardless of the text size you prefer. -Kindle Team

[weatherman]

Originally Posted by cerement

"Section" is a reference to those texts that actually use "sections" to divide segments of a book, if a book has chapters but no sections, you would cite the chapter and not the section.

So what you're saying is that the "section" of a particular passage doesn't corrolate to any particular line, sentence or paragraph, which is exactly what I had assumed. So when you say "just cite the section!" you're actually saying you need to cite the range of the sections, which is what is presented at the bottom of any given page. Which is exactly what I said from the beginning. And you should note that the range displayed changes based on the font selection, which (again) is excactly what I said from the beginning. Or am I missing something? Please clarify if I am...