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Tips and Resources on Writing Well in Seminary

This guide offers basic writing tips to help students make the transition to seminary education. Additional resources are listed for more indepth work.

Cite Sources

 

 

When to cite sources

The student must cite sources when paraphrasing, mentioning someone’s ideas, summarizing a source, quoting someone’s exact words, or use an image or video. The student does not have to cite a source when it is a historical overview, one's ideas, or is common knowledge. It is not appropriate to quote someone quoting someone else. Go to the  source of the quote and cite that source whenever possible. Here is more information.

 

Turabian

Turabian is the preferred method of citing sources at UPSem. There are many tutorials and examples on the internet. Here is one from Duke University.

Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)

While Turabian is the preferred citing method in general, the faculty of Bible classes prefer the use SBL to cite sources because it is friendlier to citing bible literature. Here is one of the better aids for using SBL.

Citation Managers

Citation managers automatically format a footnote or bibliography resource into whatever citation style the student wants to use. All the student needs to do is enter the resources information, and the citation manager does the formatting. The citation manager also keeps track of all the resources so there is a record of each resource. Several citation managers are on the internet and are free. There are also citation managers that charge a small fee to do the more basic management, plus they have additional capabilities. Here are some of the programs that are out there: JabRef, EndNote, Ref Works, Zoterobib, and Word. There is a tutorial on Zotero here. Ultimately, it is up to the student to verify the cited information because there are times when these programs are less than 100% accurate.