Harvard referencing question.

Caitlin Black

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I hope this is the best room for this question... If not, by all means move this thread, mods. :)

Okay, so I'm working on a piece of academic writing for university. By this point I'm pretty confident with my referencing. However, I seem to have come across a tricky one...

So. I have an article written by 3 authors: Douglas, Whitlock and Stumm. However, the tricky part is that it is clear within the article that Douglas and Whitlock wrote the first part of the article, and Stumm wrote only a short bit at the end. (The article is broken down into 2 sections, with names attributed accordingly.)

So, if I want to reference in-text something written in the Douglas and Whitlock section, do I write it as "Douglas and Whitlock (2008, p. 4) observe..."? Or do I have to add Stumm's name as well? I ask because it seems to me that I should just reference Douglas and Whitlock, but that in the references list at the end of my paper, I'm going to have to reference the entire article, including Stumm's name! This, naturally, might call into question my referencing skills.

So yes. I'm a little confused here. Is there an established protocol for such instances?

Any help is much appreciated, and thanks in advance. :)
 
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NDoyle

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If I was certain that Stumm did not contribute to that observation, I would cite it as follows:

Douglas and Whitlock (Douglas & al 2008, p. 4) observe...

In doing this, I presume that your bibliographic citation includes all three authors. I might also put the citation after whatever it is you are citing them for:

Douglas and Whitlock observe blah blah blah (Douglas & al 2008, p. 4).
 
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Caitlin Black

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Hmm. Okay, thanks. :)

For what it's worth, my referencing guide book thingy says to write all 3 names if it's an article/book by 3 authors... It's only et al. for 4 or more, in-text. I'm thinking I might do it as such:

Douglas and Whitlock observe blah blah blah (Douglas, Whitlock & Stumm 2008, p. 4).

And yes, I am positive that Stumm was not involved in that portion of the article. It's basically an introduction to a journal issue dealing with certain topics, with Douglas and Whitlock writing the introduction, but then a short 1-page section on what book reviews are included in this journal issue, introduced by Stumm. Clearly labeled.

Anyway, thanks for putting my mind at ease. :) In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's a huge issue, but I wanted to get it right.
 

veinglory

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If it is directly stated in the paper who did what part you can reflect that in text, preferably as a quote. If you are in any way surmising it indirectly I would just make the statement without specifying an particular persons and cite the paper afterwards.

Generally attributing to some but not all of the authors of the reference is just better avoided. After all, named attribution is not necessary to cite the material so it can easily seem like you are making a personal point by excluding someone. It is also counter to standard citation formatting.
 

blacbird

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You are probably overworrying about this, but I recommend consulting the Purdue OWL, which has detailed information on how to reference and cite references in both MLA and APA style. My initial inclination is: if the article in question is given the authorship of all three of these individuals, that's how you cite it. Period. The purpose of citation is to allow your readers to go to the cited article if they wish. For that, they need a simple, correct citation.

caw
 
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Caitlin Black

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Hmm.

I was worried about that. Now I'm not sure what to do... Perhaps it's best to just reference all 3 of them. After all, suppose I read an article written by 2 authors, and I quoted a single line - how would I know which author wrote that line, or whether it was both? But they'd both get referenced.

Hmm. Okay, I'll just reference all 3, even though I'm 99% sure that Stumm had nothing to do with writing the first part of the article.

Thanks. :)
 

veinglory

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Why are you worrying about attributing to people? The attribution goes to the article. Maybe try a difference sentence structure and just stick the citation at the end.
 

Caitlin Black

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Yes, the attribution does go to the article/book/etc. I get that. It was just this particular instance where I was going, "Uh, wait a minute... These 2 wrote part A and the 3rd wrote part B? How does... *brain splode*"

So yes. Thanks again. :)
 

Caitlin Black

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Wound up going with something to the effect of:

Blah-di-blah, 'blah blah bloggs' (Douglas, Whitlock & Stumm 2008, p. 3) blah-di-blah derp doop.

(Except, y'know, with actual words. ;)) So I didn't mention the authors except in the brackets.

Thanks all. :)