Actual writing!

[justawench]

After literally years of working on my research into printed fabrics, I've actually begun to string words together. I've decided to break it into entries based on subject, rather than writing one huge dissertation that no one will ever want to tackle. The first section will be the pre-1700 history of cotton, the dye trade and trade with India and

Comments

[yummyone]

I can't help you at all with the citing things (papers give me hives :P) but I wanted to say that I can't wait to read what you've found! It is such a complex subject with so much hearsay and misinformation that gets thrown around. Thank you for all your hard work!

[jubilima]

This will be a fantastic read!
Personally, I've grown fond of citing as many sources as possible--blame that on grad school. But even if this is for "just" a blog, the work you are doing is substantial, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that you could get a scholarly article published, so make sure you don't lose track of your sources. But to address your concerns more specifically, when you cite the same source multiple times, the first time gets a full citation and subsequent citations are abbreviated. And if you are citing a secondary source which itself cites a primary source, and you are not reverse-engineering the trail back to the original, you still cite the secondary.

[justawench]

Can I ask a dumb question? If I am writing a long paragraph of stuff that is common knowledge (Vasco de Gama found the route to India by sea, etc.) and the last sentence is something I'm citing, how do people know where my citation starts? Does it not matter? (by citation I mean paraphrasing, not quoting).

I think I've been out of school way too long.

[jubilima]

I don't think that's a dumb question. AFAIK, a citation designates a source for whatever immediately preceded it.