Who do I cite as my source?
When you have multiple sources for information like a quote, which source do you use in your book or essay. The one you may have gotten from an authors work about what a particular individual said or do you cite this persons original work?
For example I have this passage in a book I'm reading.
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) believed that intercourse with a pregnant woman was a mortal sin only when there was a danger of miscarriage (Commentary on the Sentences 4, 31, 2, 3)
If in my essay or book I wanted to say that Aquinas believed intercourse with a pregnant woman was sinful, do I cite the author's work above for my source or find exactly what Aquinas said in Commentary on the Sentences and cite that?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/16910. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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You cite the (or a) source that you used. If you read it in Book A and that book says it came from Book B, you cite Book A because that's your source. If you choose to follow the reference and see it in Book B yourself, then you could cite either A or B (you used both). In that kind of situation, it's generally best to cite the source that's closest to the source -- why cite A who cites B if you can cite B directly?
Why shouldn't you cite B if you read it in A and you think A is reliable? Well, partly because sometimes sources get it wrong -- B might not really say what A says it does. But, more broadly, any author who's found to do this sort of thing -- citing a source that he didn't actually verify directly -- calls into question all of his citations. If you think A is reliable then either (a) your readers probably do too, so citing A means something, or (b) you can explain why A is reliable.
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As others have noted, you cite the source that you actually used. If A quotes or describes B, and you have read A but have not read B (whether because it's not available, you just didn't bother, or whatever), then you cite A.
It is generally considered better to go to original sources. If some later writer says that Aquinas said sex with a pregnant woman is a sin -- and let me interject here that I have no idea what Aquinas said on the subject, I've read pieces of the Summa but I've skipped many pieces too -- the later writer may be misquoting Aquinas or applying his own interpretation to something ambiguous. If you were to say, "Aquinas said X" because some other writer claims he said X, that would simply be wrong. Especially if the writer did not give the exact quote, but even with an exact quote, you could be missing the context.
So if your point is to say, "this is what Aquinas" said, you should go to the source and read and quote (and cite) Aquinas. It's easy enough to get copies of Aquinas on the web these days. If your point is to say, "this is how so-and-so interprets Aquinas", than you should quote (and cite) so-and-so.
Some writers will give a citation like, "Aquinas, as quoted in ...". This is a reasonable thing to do if the original source is difficult to obtain. Like if he's quoting a book that is no longer in print and you can't find a copy. It's most clearly valid if the original book no longer exists, like if you're quoting a book written in AD 300 that quotes an earlier book and that earlier book has been lost to history. But for something easily available like Aquinas, for a scholarly paper I'd just get the original.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16919. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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