Uses of the abbreviation "auth." in an academic paper?
Asked by
spe42 (
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May 1st, 2020
Writing a “mock” academic paper for a writing project.
Can’t seem to find a good source for the basic conventions of use.
I.e., can “auth.” be used solely to denote the perspective of the source, or of the person writing the paper which cites said source?
As one example, is it acceptable common practice to use the abbreviation in the following way:
”(which substance of necessity ____; auth.) does not belong to (etc.)”
—where the quotes denote the total of the sourced section, and the parenthetical insertion a summary of a much longer portion.
Or is it more common to use ‘auth.’ in parentheses, at the end of a quote if you have already quoted the same author earlier on?
I realize this information should be out there somewhere, but I couldn’t really find anything saying “do this”, and “don’t do that”, or even really presenting many examples of the use of this abbreviation (without, I guess, digging through enough books and research papers on my own to get the idea) hence my curiosity. Thanks.
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9 Answers
Have you tried the OWL site at Purdue; it is their online writing guide for academic papers. It should help you.
Are you sure your model means to literally put “auth.” in the paper? or is it a placeholder in the guidance you’re following that means you should put the actual author’s name there? The latter seems more likely to me.
I have never seen this done and would never do it myself. An abbreviation that doesn’t tell you anything is not a citation, and “auth.” doesn’t tell you anything. You can use “ibid.” when citing the same source as your previous citation (though most styles only allow this if using footnotes or endnotes), but that at least tell us where to look for the full citation.
Generally, the first you use a quote from that author, you would put the author’s name and the title of the work cited in the following parenthesese as well as the page. After that, if it is the same author and work you can just put the author’s name and the pg. Then you have the full source listed at the the end of the paper.
You really should consul either the OWL resource I cited above or the suggested style manual for your course. There are different ways of doing citations and your prof will likely prefer one..
And hopefully they will not prefer a style that requires endnotes. Because endnotes are the worst.
Footnotes were actually the worst and we had to do them w typewriters!
Footnotes were the worst because they had to be done with typewriters. Now that we have computers, endnotes are the worst.
Hah. You want to know what’s the worst? Not footnotes. Not endnotes. Not bibliographies. It’s appendices of statistical tables that have to be proofread against a typewritten manuscript, figure for figure and symbol for symbol.
Drink poison first.
Oof. And the editor will get blamed even if the typo is in the manuscript. Definitely the worst.
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