We have already noted that one of the chief reasons for giving a citation is to point the reader back to the original source of information (see Why Cite?). So it is necessary for the reader to know the precise and accurate components that uniquely describe the original source so that the journey back to it is successful. For now, we will assume that there are some broad cognates or conceptual relationships between print documents and e-documents. Like all analogies this one will fail, but perhaps it will lead to a better understanding of the need for and problems with electronic citation style.

The ink-on-paper world usually includes the following citation elements for a book about one subject (known as a monograph):

• Name of author
• Title and subtitle (if any)
• Name of editor, compiler, or translator (if any)
• Name of author of preface, introduction or forward (if any)
• Number or name of the edition if not the first
• Name of the series in which the work appears
• Publication information, including:
  Place of publication
  Name of publishing body
  Date of publication

Here's an example of a citation in the paper world:

Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, fifth ed., rev. and expanded by Bonnie Birtwistle Honigsblum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 127.

Of course, there are types of ink-on-paper publications that are not monographs. One example is a book of collected essays by different authors and edited or put together by, perhaps, a completely different person. Another type is an article in a journal. Both of these examples present a more complex question. The scholar has "analyzed" the contents of a work with multiple and somewhat independent parts and has chosen to cite particular part(s). So a citation to a particular chapter might be done this way:

Joseph Bloggs, "The Abduction of the Library," in George H. Hoemann, ed., Trends in Information Science: A Critical Review (Knoxville, Tennessee: Acme Publishing, 1995), 209.

Some types of e-documents (especially those containing text) can be cited in analogous ways to these examples. One might even think of this webpage as book with several chapters. But there is a problem: even though the webpage Electronic Style...the Final Frontier has been created by one author (and might therefore be thought of and cited as a monographic work), the page is itself made up of several different pages or files and might more easily be understood as a multi-part work. If you wanted to cite this particular part of the Electronic Style...the Final Frontier webpage, you might use this file's URL (http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/elements.html). But if you wanted to cite the Electronic Style...the Final Frontier webpage as a whole, you would probably want to cite the title or first page -- but it has a different URL (http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/style.html)! Just as a binding holds a book or magazine together, so do internal links from one file to another hold a webpage together. And each file that makes up a webpage has its own URL (see Internet Addresses for a discussion of URLs).

So, which one(s) do you cite? It depends! What are you trying to convey to the reader? Do you want to point to a particular piece of information or viewpoint, or do you want to refer the reader to the entire work? That difference in intention defines what to cite and also points up the difference between a citation, which is often a reference to a particular piece of information and a bibliography, which is more often a listing of works consulted.

But webpages are even more complex. What about the links to external servers and files? They were "written" by someone other than the author of this webpage. In fact, links to external sites are like footnotes in an ink-on-paper work -- they guide the reader to an "outside" source. The chief difference is that the hypertext link takes you to that outside source immediately -- you don't have to go the library and find the book or journal.

Using the list of citation elements above and the URL, let's construct a citation for Electronic Style...the Final Frontier.

Name of author

/~hoemann -- but is that enough?

Title and subtitle

Electronic Style...the Final Frontier

Publication information

http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/style.html

So far, so good. The only pieces of information that we lack are the author's name and the date of publication. Luckily many webpages include the author's name in an introduction or in a section usually called "about this page." In this case, the contents page lists a file by that name. The author's full name is given there as well as a notation about when the page was last revised. So a complete citation to this webpage might look like this:

George H. Hoemann, Electronic Style...the Final Frontier (http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/style.html), 1995.

But let's say that we wanted to cite this particular part, "Elements of Citation" from the whole webpage. There are two approaches: you could simply use the author's name, file title, and file URL:

George H. Hoemann, Electronic Style--Elements of Citation (http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/elements.html), 1995.

But that doesn't quite convey that this particular file is part of a larger whole. This might be more accurate, but it's much longer:

George H. Hoemann, "Electronic Style--Elements of Citation" (http://web.utk.edu/~hoemann/elements.html), in Electronic Style...the Final Frontier (http://web.utk.edu~hoemann/style.html), 1995.

Unfortunately, there is no agreement within the Internet community about how much is enough. Discussions and the few printed authorities tend to suggest that, at least for now, "more is better." In other words, when in doubt add information to insure that the reader will be able to identify and locate the e-document that you are citing. Following that guideline, example 3 is probably the best because it supplies the most information.

But what about image or sound files, or email or listservs messages or newsgroup postings? These common e-documents lack certain components that we used in constructing the citation for the webpage. Image and sound files are just that -- digitized images and sounds. While someone created the files, those files do not (usually) contain information about authorship or creation. On the other hand, unless email, listserv messages or newsgroup postings are extracted into files or are saved into an archive, they are almost always erased or retained in computer accounts not generally accessible to the public. That's important because lack of accessibility means the reader can not "check" a source and must accept the author's reference on faith.

Presently there are no good answers to these problems. But following the general rule of citing as much information as possible, here are some suggestions:

1. For images and sound files, use the URL. For example, the image that graces the title page of Electronic Style...the Final Frontier has no formal name or author or publication data. The file, however, is named "galaxy.jpg" and it resides at web.utk.edu/~hoemann/galaxy.jpg -- use that.
   
2. Follow the same form for sound files.
   
3. Cite as much as possible regarding email, using names, dates, and account names, and subject: Joe Bloggs (bloggs@durango.uwyo.edu) to George H. Hoemann (hoemann@utkvx.utk.edu), April 14, 1995, Subject: Stuff
   
4. Follow a similar form for listserv, distributed email, or newsgroups including the name of the list or group and subject: Joe Bloggs (Bloggs@durango.uwyo.edu) to Citation-l@ubvm.bitnet, April 17, 1995, Subject: The apparent disregard for citation form

One final word regarding email, lists and newsgroups. If you cite this type of information you have an ethical obligation to be able to produce the message or posting upon request. The essence of citation is verification of information. If a reader cannot retrieve the source, s/he cannot see the full context or confirm the accuracy of presentation. In that event a citation is meaningless and scholarship becomes more an act of faith rather than an act of research.