Sources

As I continue to prepare for another week of positive reporting, I thought I'd take a few moments to share some impromptu thoughts with you all. I really enjoy providing positive content to you all and consider myself blessed to have this opportunity.

Every article requires research. You may notice that I link all sorts of content throughout each post. There's all sorts of information that's not automatically in my head or in the popular consciousness, and I write these posts to disseminate information about stuff that's currently going on (among other things), which means that I need to learn something about what's going on first. But, my experience is in technical/scientific writing and, of course, writing essays as schoolwork. In those contexts the standards for citation are rigorous. Journalistic writing, however, is different. I cannot say that I consider myself a journalist, but as my aim is to cover current events, I at least need to try and follow journalistic standards to some extent.

In my experience as a layperson reading the news, I have found that the majority of online articles I read link their sources as hyperlinks, instead of with a formal bibliography. This form of, well, in-formal citation is very effective for web content as users will have the opportunity to click and view the content for themselves without the encumbrance of searching for the corresponding reference in a list. This is the method of citation that I have used thus far in my writing, and it appears standard for the news. Most everything that I post will have references. I believe very strongly in the importance of citing sources, and as such I wish to make very clear that these links constitute citations, or, in cases where I didn't use anything from the link, suggestions for further reading on the part of the reader. In sum, these links constitute a sort of bibliography. I have no intent to steal or plagiarize content and I hope that all readers can find use and benefit from the links I provide. (I also wish to be very clear that citation does not constitute endorsement, and that I do not necessarily endorse the resources I link.)

It seems that one standard for journalism is called the AP Stylebook, published by the Associated Press, but unfortunately the full stylebook is both lengthy and costly. In the future, I would love to learn the full AP standard for writing, but for the time being that is outside of my reach. Many of the highlights can be found published by websites like Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, as linked above. But, citations aren't one of the highlights they've published. I did find this article that did explain to me that the AP Stylebook is not particularly strict when it comes to citations. And, since I've explained to y'all everything I know about journalistic citations thus far, I hope that you'll agree with me that the link method I have followed thus far is appropriate.

I hope that you all have a wonderful evening!

-- Seal with a Pen