Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17975
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Consider how your reader will use the book.

In an academic work (which this is not), readers:

- are likely to already be familiar with the cited works (they're also researchers in this field, after all)

- will rely on the works you cite to evaluate your work (they _care_ about those citations)

- read lots of such articles and welcome a consistent style (whichever one the publisher or university calls for)

But your goal is different. You are writing a persuasive book, presumably aimed at people who haven't studied the topic as much as you have. Your readers:

- cannot be assumed to be immediately familiar with the source, beyond a few oft-used verses (which they may misremember or misunderstand or have seen misused)

- want to see that you've done your research (you're building on a firm foundation), but probably aren't going to check every reference, or may only glance at it

- _are_ going to check _some_ of them, when your argument veers into territory they feel strongly about (hence the need for citations)

- cannot be assumed to be familiar with the norms of academic publishing

There's a further consideration with your particular topic. Citations of other publications tend to be more wordy -- "Smith, John, _A Study of Ancient Near East Agriculture_, 1972, Oxford University Press" or some such. But many of your citations will be of the form "Genesis 12:1" or perhaps "Genesis 12:1 (JPS 1917)" to indicate the translation if you're not using the same one throughout your work.

The main difference between MLA and Chicago is that of inline citations ("[Smith, 1972]") versus notes. Long citations, particularly if used in several places in your book, are invasive and repetitive if done inline; that's why MLA uses a short token that is a pointer into a bibliography at the end. In Chicago style, that citation would a footnote or endnote; each note stands on its own (aside from uses of _ibid_ for repeated uses).

Short citations like biblical verses, on the other hand, are, well, _short_. They don't get in the way if used inline unless you're really piling them up. They're also easy to present in footnotes; the reader can take a quick glance at the bottom of the page, see the note, and continue on. (I would discourage endnotes in this case; they have all the downsides of making the reader do extra work with none of the upsides of moving long citations out of the way.)

I started this answer by saying to consider your reader; I'll end it by saying, after considering your reader, consider your own set of citations. If you're writing a book where there'll be a few citations of biblical verses per page, I'd recommend just doing them inline. (In your introduction you should say which translation you're using.) If there are going to be a _lot_ of citations, or if more than a very few will be to something other than biblical verses, then I'd recommend Chicago-style footnotes -- that way the information is readily available for the reader who wants it but it doesn't get in the way.

Original score: 3