What citation style floats your boat?

[MoJingly]

So I'm currently writing a final paper for a class that didn't give any formatting specifications. I think I've settled on using the "Nature Paper" format from Mendeley but need some advice on where you most like citations in the sentence. I'm not sure if this is convention because I've seen it quite a few different ways.

Tips?

[Eigen]

IMO, neither is correct. What you want is:

Smith et al found that giant pandas dance to rap music. [1]

Most of the styles I'm familiar with, if you're citing the sentence as a whole, the citation comes after the punctuation at the end. Only if you're citing one part of the sentence but not others do you put a citation in the center, like:

While Smith et al found that giant pandas dance to rap music [1], Jones et al found that they preferred jazz [2].

In the latter case, the second citation goes inside the punctuation, since it's referring to the latter part of the sentence rather than the sentence as a whole.

[MoJingly]

That makes sense, Eigen. I keep seeing different ways of doing this in papers. The one I'm looking at right now, for example, always has the citation before the period.

Hmm.

[Eigen]

Some styles are very particular one way or the other. I have yet to figure out if it's american/european, or just different journals.

Each journal and editor in my field has a completely different standard, so I'm flipping back and forth between 8 or 9 style guides pretty consistently.

[natsteel]

As a historian, I use Chicago note-bibliography style. For whatever reason, I find in-text citations aesthetically displeasing as they break up the rhythm and flow of the prose.

Most of my professors don't specify endnotes or footnotes, but I always prefer the latter. I love when publishers use footnotes so I don't have to keep turning to the back to look at the citations.

As to the question above, I always put the footnote number at the end of the sentence. Some professors and publishers prefer footnotes only come at the end of a paragraph, but they can tend to get a bit clunky if you're paragraph has 3 or more citations.

[MakeYourself]

For APA it would be the first one.

[comp12]

While Smith et al found that giant pandas dance to rap music [1], Jones et al found that they preferred jazz [2].

If one is using Chicago style, I think usually it is preferred to have superscripts placed after the punctuation:

Q. When using a superscript footnote number at the end of a sentence, should the period precede or follow the footnote number? What about footnote numbers in midsentence that fall next to some other form of punctuation (comma, semicolon, etc.)?

A. Please see CMOS 14.21: “A note number should generally be placed at the end of a sentence or at the end of a clause. The number normally follows a quotation (whether it is run into the text or set as an extract). Relative to other punctuation, the number follows any punctuation mark except for the dash, which it precedes.” See 14.21 for examples.

[Eigen]

Quite true for Chicago. The OP, however, is following Nature style citations.

Nature doesn't answer the question in their style guide, but instead refer authors to NPG papers to see the convention.

From my recollection, most papers follow the conventions I gave above with respect to punctuation.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Eigen

[Eigen]

So, for what it's worth (I'm sure you've finished and turned it in by now), I pulled a dozen or so of the Nature Publishing Group articles I have laying around, and they follow the second citation style you give- all citations, listed as superscripted numbers at the end of a sentence, separated by commas.

For kicks, I also checked out ACS style guide and compared it to RSC (American Chemical Society vs Royal Society (UK))- ACS keeps bracketed citations within the punctuation, but keeps superscripted citations outside of the punctuation. RSC is all superscripted, and all outside the paragraph. Of course, all ACS based journals use superscripted numbers for citation, which would then match RSC and go outside of the punctuation at the end of a paragraph.

[graciado]

MLA, hands down! Of course, since I'm now back in the UK, I'm forced into using MHRA. It's just not the same.