The Citation Shortcut for Liberal Arts Scholars: Printable Tables & AI Editing Prompts
- Dr. Christine Diane Allen
- 21 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Quick quiz: Do you know what the following stand for?
ibid.
passim
s.v.
q.v.
ca. fl.
aet.
OE
Lat.
mss.
fol.Â
If you’re working on a thesis, dissertation, or manuscript, you likely don’t have assistants to handle the formatting. It’s just you, your sources, and a deadline. The biggest time-sink isn’t the writing—it’s the constant context switching. Every time you stop to look up whether it’s v.i. or v.t., or how to properly cite a footnote from three pages back, you lose your momentum. Keep quick-reference guides pinned by your computer for whatever causes you to stop and look up information in reference books. I’m starting with the guides that helped me keep my workflow moving.
This isn’t a dense manual; it’s a quick-access job aid (link is at the end of this blog entry) designed to lighten cognitive load so you can stay focused. If your entries are already written and you want to run them through an LLM, try the prompt below, engineered to act as a style auditor. This example is for CMOS 17th users. You can create your own list of stylistic rules based on the style you’re using (or hire me to do it), but this should give you a starting point for constructing your own prompt. Improve the prompt by:
Asking the model to check its work for factuality and to not hallucinate (as all LLMs are prone to do).
Asking the model to check its work for completeness, as if often leaves elements out.
Asking the model to check databases to detect input errors and to list (with links to the sources) rather than change the errors.
Provide examples of what perfect citations should look like.
Insert examples of how erroneous entries might be listed, manuscripts may be listed as ms. or as mss with no period,
If you're early in the process, ask the model if you have left out any critical voices or more recent works pertaining to your thesis questions.
Important (though it goes without saying): For academics, LLMs are good for identifying gaps, logical inconsistencies, and patterns of any kind. They should not be used for content creation. Also, catalogue your prompts and keep them updated; when you notice the output has a problem, adjust the prompt, test it, and revise your catalogue of prompts.
Sample Prompt for Using the Quick Reference Sheet in Your Self-Editing Process
Role: You are a senior academic copy-editor and typesetter specializing in long-form liberal arts manuscripts. Your task is to edit or generate citations (footnotes, endnotes, or bibliographies) using the provided liberal arts style reference sheet.Â
Primary Style Directive: Use the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. [change as needed], as the default.
Rule: Do not use periods in academic degrees (e.g., use PhD, MFA, BA, not Ph.D.).
Abbreviation Logic: Apply the following scholarly abbreviations and context notes strictly:
Source Repetition: Use ibid. sparingly for exact same sources, but acknowledge it is discouraged in newer CMOS revisions. Use id. for the same author as the previous citation.
Location/Detail: Use s.v. (sub verbo) for dictionary/lexicon entries and pass. (passim) to indicate an idea appears throughout a work. Use ad loc. when referring to a specific passage.
Chronology: Use ca. for "circa" (preferred over "c."). Use fl. (floruit) for active years when birth/death dates are unknown.
Linguistic Origins: Use OE, OFr., and ON for Old English, French, and Norse. Use Lat. for Latin.
Technical Spacing: Ensure there are no spaces between the number and a % sign. Convert double hyphens to em dashes (—) with no surrounding spaces.
Use et al. for 4+ authors
Page ranges: Use p./pp. in CMOS notes. Avoid f./ff. (following pages); use explicit page ranges instead.
Constraint: Do not use "we" in your response. Output the corrected text in three distinct spaces: Corrected Content, Applied Rules Summary, and Technical Integrity Notes.
User Task: [INSERT YOUR CITATION LIST OR DRAFT CONTENT HERE]
Need More Help?
The year I prepared for my doctoral exams, I studied day and night, seven days a week, for a year. I had stacks and stacks of books and printed journal articles. I had used every window and mirror in my house as a makeshift whiteboard. In fact, I made the mistake of using my shower wall as a whiteboard and never could completely erase the markings (don’t do it–fiberglass is porous). My desk, bed, books, and bookshelves were so full of sticky notes, I often lost track of the context for which they were written. By the end of the year, I’d come up with several job aids and work flows to help me build a comprehensive, crossreferenced understanding of 128 books. In the meantime, I had hundreds of sources (some scholarly, some artifacts) for my dissertation, as my defense would follow exams. I have intended to share some of the tools I used since graduating in 2020, but my most recent work offered unlimited training in various subjects, and I can never turn down a pool of new ideas. Here are a few services I can offer:
Send me your reading list; I can make an annotated bibliography and create protocols to keep track of and crossreference sources.
Send me research questions; i can create tables you can use to synthesize and differentiate ideas across a number of sources.
I can help you engineer topic-specific prompts to automate deployment of styleguides and to search for holes in your argument. As a professional who has worked on LLM training, i know that models are not sufficient for writing a thesis or dissertation, but they are excellent at noticing patterns like overuse of repetition, logical fallacies (if you have great prompts), and data analysis to hypothesize ideas you can then investigate.
Finally, you can send me your school’s guidelines for making your work print-ready and I can send you a customized template or I can typeset and copy-edit it for you and help you develop any graphics you need.
Let’s get your mechanics standardized so you can focus on the substance.