Practical Scalar Guide for the Field of Digital History

Citations

Since Scalar is a platform for scholarly publishing, proper citations are a must.  Due to the already expansive wealth of information on proper footnoting technique already present on the internet, this page will instead focus on how to insert citations into Scalar.

The easiest way is to cut and paste a pages worth of text and citations into Scalar from a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word.  The preliminary text without citations can be typed into Scalar, and then copied into the word processor, cited, and pasted back into Scalar.  Unfortunately, the coding behind the text in many word processors makes straight pasting difficult.  If you go this route, however, you can hit the "Source" button at the top left-hand corner of the WYSIWYG bar above the writing pane and take out the additional script manually (or maybe just write your citations in .rtf format).

Scalar also has a feature that allows users to paste from Word.  Clicking the paste from word button will bring up an interface that will allow users to paste from word with no ill effects, and citations will be entered as well.  Citations will also function as they did in their native word processor, where clicking the citation number will jump down the page to the citation itself.

I recommend that all historians working on Scalar include a "Credits" Page at the end of their projects.  [I require it of all my students.]  This is a good place for full bibliographic citations (especially if you didn't footnote your earlier pages) and links to sources you depended upon for your materials – especially the place where you acquired your pictures.  Picture, of course, can include citations in their annotations.  You can also annotate the annotations if you don't want that information to be too conspicuous.  However, since it always to give as much credit as you can, citing your sources in as many ways as possible is always a good idea.

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