7th Edition of Turabian Is a Great Improvement
The 7th edition of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers features significant new material, a more user-friendly arrangement, much-needed rules for online resources, and an eye-friendly, two-tone typeset format.
Editors Booth, Colomb, and Williams have adapted material from their The Craft of Research and inserted it as Part I of the 7th edition. Researchers now get both a style guide and a research guide in one book.
The three-part format for the 7th edition also makes it easier to navigate. Part I is the new research guide; Part II is the rules for source citation; Part III is the style guide. In the 6th edition, the first chapter was a guide to the parts of a research paper which then had to be compared to the formats and sample layouts in the last chapter. The new edition combines all this material together in Appendix A along with instructions that are updated to reflect common word processor settings. And the index at the back of the volume now references items by page number rather than chapter and section, a great improvement in my opinion.
The 7th edition brings Turabian up-to-date by including rules and examples for citing online sources. Part II also separates the instructions for notes/bibliography style from the instructions for parenthetical/reference list style. What had been a completely separate chapter for citing public documents is now helpfully included with the rest of the citation rules. Part II of edition 7 now includes over 100 pages of citation examples compared to the 26 pages in chapter 11 of the 6th edition.
One weakness that is not corrected in the new edition is that Turabian's official stance for encyclopedias and other reference works is still that they should only be cited in notes. (17.5.3, p.191) Nothing acknowledges the difficulties of citing scholarly encyclopedia or dictionary references where signed articles are the norm. One can, however, adapt the instructions for edited collections on p.179 to sufficiently cite academic reference works.
Finally, the blue-and-black typesetting makes it much easier to distinguish in-text examples and to move one's eye from section to section.
It is fitting that the 7th edition has been published on the 20th anniversary of Kate Turabian's death. The many improvements in this edition will ensure its place on student bookshelves for years to come.
Nerds of the world, rejoice!
I have owned the Sixth Edition of Turabian for about five years and it has been used to the point of disintegration. I was excited about the new edition and when I received it I was elated to find that the Chicago Style Manual was included with the writer's manual. The editors have updated the manual to include citation of electronic sources which, if you have been doing any academic writing recently, has been a matter of preference. The two-color priniting makes section headings easier to find as you are leafing through the pages. The editors have included a bibliography divided into various disciplines that provides some suggestions for further research. Overall, I am enjoying using the new manual. The biggest downside is that I am having to relearn the section headings that I have grown familiar with over the past five years. Small price to pay for the added advantage of having the Chicago Style Manual at my fingertips.
Nerds, do yourselves a favor and update your Turabian manual. You won't be sorry.
Dr Frankenstein's Top Pick
This new edition of the venerable Turabian manual is no more than a rough draft. It is perhaps a second draft, but a work in process nonetheless. The need for a deft ediorial hand to finish work is soon evident to any knowledgable reader. First, the same material on tables and figures is covered in two separate sections. This material could have been consolidated in one place. Second, essential information on references is overly wordy and convoluted, requiring five chapters to present the same material that needed just one in the previous edition. Third, there is a serious lack of focus. The promise of the first section is not fullfilled in the second. The focus shifts. Were this a thesis or a dissertation, it would not get past the student's advisor to the full committee. Were this an article submitted for publication, the editor would return it for needed revisions. Were this a patchwork body of Dr. Frankenstein's creation, it would still need an energizing spark to bring it to life.
There are two distinct sections to this text. The first is an elementary, but polished, introduction to crafting research papers by eminent and accomplished scholars. The second seeks to present "Chicago style for researchers and students," which is the subtitle of the volume. The transition between the two is not smooth. While the first section is for beginners, the second is for advanced students, presenting numerous graphics to help format a dissertation, but just a single graphic for class papers, a title page. Thus, the neophyte is given the task of inferring from the format of a dissertation how a class paper should look. This seems backwards. Shouldn't the task of translating from one format to another be given to the more advanced student? Better yet, why not present both formats? Students writing a dissertation are well beyond needing the elementary guide to doing research found in the first half of the book. The focus shifts from beginner to near-professional with no closure for the beginner and no preparation for the grad student. Could this be the patchwork creation of a mad (but competent) scientist?
An appendix is the literary equivalent of an afterthought, and that is where the page format graphics have been relegated. Apparently the editors of this venerable "manual of writers of research papers," considers the format of words, sentences, tables, figures, paragraphs, and quotations more important than their presentation on the page. Perhaps, "A Manual for Writers of Research Text" would be a more honest title. The subtitle, not the title, appears to be the ordering principle of the second half of the book--Chicago Style for for Researchers and Students. The emphasis is on the style and not the final product, the research paper. This may be a fine point to some, but both the APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) place page formats in the body of their style manuals.
The previous edition presented the three Chicago reference formats--footnote/endnote, bibliography, and reference list--side by side in a single chapter. This proved so effective that the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style elected to do the same thing. But this edition of the Turabian manual has expanded this one chapter into five. The question is why, for whom? Shouldn't students be treated to the simpler presentation? William of Occcam is the author of a famous priciple in philosophy know as Occam's Razor. He argued that when given a choice of alternative explanations the simplest will generally prove the most reliable. About 600 years later, William Strunk, Jr., advised his students to "omit needless words," and we might add, needless chapters.
Given these observations, how would you grade a text with these problems? To me, it reads like a rough draft in need of additional work. I would not want to present a text in this condition to a dissertation committee. And by that standard, a revised edition is called for. With both the Turabian manual and Chicago manual on my bookshelf, I invariably go to the Chicago manual when I have a question. Ironically, with the previous editions of both texts it was the other way around. The new Turabian manual does manage to cover the essential features of Chicago style, and though it is a great buy at amazon prices, it is no bargain. It is a disjointed patchwork offensive to a disciplined mind. Dr. Frankenstein, would you care to hazard a second opinion?
About A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) detail
- Amazon Sales Rank: #550 in Books
- Published on: 2007-04-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 436 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780226823379
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Description
Now, with this seventh edition, Turabian’s Manual has undergone its most extensive revision, ensuring that it will remain the most valuable handbook for writers at every level—from first-year undergraduates, to dissertation writers apprehensively submitting final manuscripts, to senior scholars who may be old hands at research and writing but less familiar with new media citation styles. Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the late Wayne C. Booth—the gifted team behind The Craft of Research—and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff combined their wide-ranging expertise to remake this classic resource. They preserve Turabian’s clear and practical advice while fully embracing the new modes of research, writing, and source citation brought about by the age of the Internet.
Booth, Colomb, and Williams significantly expand the scope of previous editions by creating a guide, generous in length and tone, to the art of research and writing. Growing out of the authors’ best-selling Craft of Research, this new section provides students with an overview of every step of the research and writing process, from formulating the right questions to reading critically to building arguments and revising drafts. This leads naturally to the second part of the Manual for Writers, which offers an authoritative overview of citation practices in scholarly writing, as well as detailed information on the two main citation styles (“notes-bibliography” and “author-date”). This section has been fully revised to reflect the recommendations of the fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and to present an expanded array of source types and updated examples, including guidance on citing electronic sources.
The final section of the book treats issues of style—the details that go into making a strong paper. Here writers will find advice on a wide range of topics, including punctuation, table formatting, and use of quotations. The appendix draws together everything writers need to know about formatting research papers, theses, and dissertations and preparing them for submission. This material has been thoroughly vetted by dissertation officials at colleges and universities across the country.
This seventh edition of Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is a classic reference revised for a new age. It is tailored to a new generation of writers using tools its original author could not have imagined—while retaining the clarity and authority that generations of scholars have come to associate with the name Turabian.
