Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
Why a citation is a path not a trophy
A citation is coordinates back to a source, not a medal hung on the sentence.
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From the opening
A citation tells a reader where a claim, a quotation, or a fact came from, with enough detail to find that source again. It is a path: author, work, and a location inside the work, arranged so someone else can walk it. The opening covers author, work, and locator, a name alone is not a path, and how the reader checks a claim.
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Inside
- Author, work, and locator
- A name alone is not a path
- How the reader checks a claim
- Style is the order of the pieces
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- A scholarly citation as a retrievable locator
- Reference lists as the collected addresses for in-text pointers