Topic Websites
MLA:
“Eminem—Enemies and Rivals/Beefs.” TRSShady.com: The Ultimate Fansite. 2005.
[“section or page title.”] [website name.] [posting date.]
14 Oct. 2005 <http://www.trsshady/eminemenemies.>
[date of access] [<URL.>]APA:
Eminem—enemies and rivals/beefs. (2005). TRSShady.com: The Ultimate Fansite.
[section or page title.] [(posting date).] [website name.]
Retrieved October 14, 2005, from http://www.trsshady/eminemenemies
[Retrieved date of access,] [from URL]Chicago:
21. “Eminem—Enemies and Rivals/Beefs.”
[fn. #.] [“title.”]
[Shortened Chicago reference; see More Notes on Chicago Style for more information.]
[Note: In the Bibliography, Chicago style does not generally include date of access.]
Websites that are print sources posted online, online versions of print periodicals, online journals, or organization websites are discussed separately. By “topic websites,” we mean sites that are dedicated to a single issue, such as the life of a famous person, the main ideas of a social movement, or the details of a popular television show. This category is a little hard to define. Unlike online journals or other periodicals, topic websites are not usually revised on a regular schedule, although material may be added from time to time. And unlike organization websites, topic websites do not usually promote the products or mission of a particular institution—which means they also don’t have the organization’s reputation to back up their authority. Finally, topic websites may also overlap with private websites, which often focus on a single issue that their author is passionate about.
Still, the category is worth knowing about, because a lot of background information on general topics like “Medieval Literature” or “Film Noir” is found on websites that don’t easily fit any of the other categories. You’ll want to double-check material you find on Topic Websites, and you may need to treat them as popular sources rather than scholarly sources. If you take these precautions, topic websites are sometimes useful for giving a broad overview or putting you on the track of more authoritative sources. (See Special Demands of Internet Sources for more information.)
When these websites appear to be wholly or primarily the work of one author, list by the author’s name, followed by the title of the article or specific page you’re using (if there is one), the website title (often the name of the topic), the date of posting (if known), the date you accessed it, and the full URL—the Webaddress that begins with “http.”
Some of these details will be hard to identify; for instance, in the example above, no author’s name is discernible, and the date of publication given is just the last date the site was updated.
If the site you’re using is sponsored by an organization of some kind (like a company, a university department, or a political group), it may qualify as an organization website, and you should review the information for those sources.
Note: You may notice that listing Internet sources often takes more time and care than listing print sources. Since the authorship and location of Web sources are harder to establish, readers need even more information in order to assess sources and to retrieve them for further study. See Special Demands of Internet Sources for more information.
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