4. Parenthetical References and Reference Lists

Some fields of scholarship, such as the natural and social sciences prefer the use of parenthetical references and reference lists to footnotes and bibliography. Authors writing about history or Christian education may occasionally use this style.

In parenthetical reference style, when an author is quoted or otherwise referred to, the surname of the author (or editor, compiler, translator, group of authors, etc.) is introduced into the body of the text in parentheses, together with the year of publication. There is no comma between the name and the year. Works having more than three authors use the name of the first, followed by et al. or and others. The page number from which the quote is taken follows after a comma.

(Sannikov 2001,121)

(Hudson and Townsend 1988, 70)

(Alexander and others 1999, 42)

Details on the publications quoted are then given in the reference list at the end. Like a bibliography, a reference list is organized alphabetically according to the authors’ last name and single-spaced with one blank line between entries. The first line of each entry is flush left, and any additional lines are indented five spaces.

The information in the reference list is presented in the following order:

• Author’s name, surname first.

• The year of publication.

• The full title and subtitle of the book (in italics), or article (without quotation marks), capitalized in sentence style (capitalize the first word of the title or subtitle and only proper nouns and proper adjectives thereafter).

• Full name of editor(s) and translator(s).

• Name of series, and volume and number in the series.

• Edition, if other than the first.

• Number of volumes.

• City where the book was published (and state or province, if in North America and not well known), followed by a colon.

• Name of publisher.

Note that all the items in a reference list are separated from one another by a period except for the city where a work was published, which is followed by a colon.

Examples of reference list style:

Alexander, Patrick H., John F. Kutsko, James D. Ernest, Shirley A. Decker-Lucke,

David L. Peterson. 1999. The SBL handbook of style for ancient near eastern,

biblical, and early Christian studies. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson.

Hudson, Bob and Shelley Townsend, eds. 1988. A Christian writer’s manual of style.

Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Sannikov, S. V. 2001. Dvadtsat’ vekov khristianstva. Vol. 2, Vtoroe tysiacheletie.

Odessa: Bogomyslie.