Footnote at the end of each sentence?

Footnote at the end of each sentence?

 In a research report, most if not all of the information you give will be beyond common knowledge. As such, this information should be footnoted consistently. Failing to do so would be plagiarism since you are not giving credit for where you got the information. However, this does not mean you have to have a footnote at the end of each sentence that contains information that is not common-knowledge. For example, you may be paraphrasing from one source for 3-5 consecutive sentences in presenting an example. Accordingly, you would only need to give the footnote at the end of the last sentence.


See the example below that shows providing a footnote after consecutive sentences of paraphrasing (the John Smith book is not a real book, merely an example):



As you can see in the example, pages 16-20 in John Smith's book are paraphrased in 4 sentences. Appropriately, the footnote superscript number is not inserted till the last sentence of the paraphrase. In this way, the writer did not have to give a footnote at the end of each sentence. 

If you switch from one example to another (carburetor issues to airframe design, for example), but you are still paraphrasing the same source, you still need to provide another footnote so the reader knows where each of the examples are coming from (and what page numbers they are coming from if the source is paginated). 


Note- You must have a footnote at the end of the sentence if you give a direct quote.

As an additional note,  when giving the footnote information you do not give a comma after the title if there is end punctuation like a question mark or exclamation mark. Similarly, you do not give a period after the question mark or exclamation point in the title within a bibliography.

Example:

bibliography-          Smith, Donald. Absolom, Absolom! New York: Fortress, 2012.
footnote-                Donald Smith, Absolom, Absolom! (New York: Fortress, 2012), 24.


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