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This guide concerns the correct way to quote other writers, to abbreviate, to use punctuation, and to construct footnotes and bibliographies. |
Note that there are two broadly accepted ways of constructing footnotes and bibliographies, called the Author–Title system and the Author–Date system, respectively. The first system is slightly more complex, but leaves the text of the essay less cluttered. Students are free to choose the system they prefer. However, it is of great importance that a scholarly writer strives for consistency, whether in punctuation, spelling, layout or the format of references.The following style guide follows Billie Jean Collins, Bob Buller, and John F. Kutsko, The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta, GA.: SBL, 2014), hereafter abbreviated the SBL Handbook. The book is held in Reference in the Library, and research students may sometimes need to consult it. The SBL Handbook is a modified version of the Chicago-Turabian style, and a helpful resource, especially for electronic media, is “Chicago (17th ed.)/Turabian (9th ed.),” EasyBib, 2018, http://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/chicago-turabian/ .