On Kate Turabian’s Very Anglican Academic Contribution

Kate L. Turabian (AD 1893-1987)

By Bp. Joseph William Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

INTRODUCTION

Academicians universally praise the Turabian paper writing model as an indispensable tool in their professional tool kit. It is a result of many converging cultural, academic, educational, and economic factors, which chronicle the rise of the Post-WWII American world order and the importance of American academia to the rest of the developing world. Kate Turabian (1893-1987) was a secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958 (Turabian 2018, xiii). She was curator of the university's dissertations and was responsible for professionally collecting, organizing, cataloging, and reviewing dissertations. During her thirty years in this capacity, Mrs. Turabian distilled the approach to research and style that would later bear her name, even though she did not invent this style, merely refining what was already known as the "Chicago" school of writing. Turabian was known as "A devout Episcopalian, an accomplished cook, an enthusiastic and adventurous traveler, and a voracious reader…" (Ilhamsyarif 2009). Her enduring legacy lives on in "A Manual for Writers," first published as a book in 1955 and now in its 9th edition. It crystallizes a format that reflects the Middle-American cultural values of utility, Middle-Class egalitarianism, and the "All may, some should, but no one must" via media of the Anglican Christian aesthetic that tended towards the broad sensibilities and principled freedoms of America's Mid-Century intelligentsia. As a writer sharing much of the same cultural background, a Middle American birthright, and an Anglican religious formation, I find that Kate Turabian's style philosophy rings true to my personal experience and raises questions about my own identity. Does Turabian's "Manual" truly represent the height of the American cultural empire’s pragmatic ethos? Can such a thing even be proven while writing a short response paper? 

WHAT ARE THE GOALS BEHIND RESEARCH?

The thought process for the Manual begins well before I start writing. It prompts me to ask the basic questions - How do I reflect on a community's needs? How do I promote an ongoing conversation? How do I make a measurable contribution to a continuous process of discovering the truth? These are modest, realistic goals that focus on the superiority of group wisdom to individual intuition and insight while offering up the fruits of a well-formed individual psyche for the benefit of the collective (Turabian 2018, 29-30). Overly individualistic academics and artists often neglect this communal center, which leads us to the contemporary problem of hyper-individualism and atomized consumerism, disconnecting the focus of research from the questions of the specialist community or the needs of the civilization at large. The Turabian mentality attempts to contextualize my work as a small part of a whole, focusing on answering questions that my readers will have and trying to start a conversation that will prompt more inquiry and thorough analysis throughout time (Turabian 2018, 5-24).

HOW DO I CREATE A RESEARCH PROCESS IN THE TURABIAN METHOD?

Determining the scope and intent of a writing project is vital to its future success. If I want to do this, there are several excellent ways to start this process and help to clarify to myself and others what my intent will be. The first tool is to fill out the formula – "I am working on X. Question: because I want to find out about Y. Significance: so that I can help others understand Z" (Turabian 2018, 17). Once I have identified these questions, fleshing this out further into an easily communicated thesis statement is helpful. This thesis is often called an "Elevator Speech," which extrapolates the above formula in a way that helps focus my interest and the interest of those around me (Turabian 2018, 134). An appropriate example of this would be, "I am working on the Turabian writing style, because I want to find out the secrets of good writing, so that I can help people understand how to communicate better." I then fill out this format with sub-headers and facts that I discover along the way but always keep this purpose in mind. Trimming off everything outside of this purpose makes my writing concise and valuable. If one does not have this process in mind and work around these central principles, there is no way to determine what is helpful to report and valuable to others, and the paper becomes an "information dump" (Turabian 2018, 26). 

Turabian reminds me that the best way to avoid an immature habit of mind, requiring the reader to discern their motivation for reading my cobbled-together information dump, is to define what questions I should ask tightly. I can achieve this clarity by focusing on things that are not too obvious or boring and avoiding things that I have no hope of ever answering, either because they are too abstract or because there is no possibility of finding documentation. Another technique that helps me to focus on what fits into an understandable narrative is to sketch out a storyboard, which is a technique I first learned working as an animator over 15 years ago. Storyboards enable me to ask questions, predict answers, manipulate format, and pin everything up on a board to structure around a linear or hyper-linked narrative structure, allowing me to get the "big picture" (Turabian 2018, 21). This structure becomes my "outline" (Turabian 2018, 25-50, 67).

HOW DO I CONSTRUCT AN ARGUMENT?

One of the most useful sections discusses constructing arguments for my paper based upon a purpose statement. After defining my basic questions, I need to frame why I want my readers to care about my answers. I must take care to anticipate the questions that will arise in the minds of my readers while they interact with my writing. Anticipating these questions is key to crafting a persuasive paper (Turabian 2018, 60-62). Aside from the obvious questions of credibility, authority, transparency, and uniqueness of perspective, readers want to know your motivation for research and writing and what you are trying to make them conclude, believe, or do. I must state these things openly and with well-reasoned arguments. If I hedge on any of these issues, doubt will cloud my reader's mind, setting them against me and creating obstacles for the continued conversation I am hoping to have with them (Turabian 2018, 51-65).

I must create an argument structured around finding evidence, questioning previous assumptions, disproving previous "easy answers," or showing how things are not what I expected to find. When issues are not apparent after much research, a paper can be valuable in raising new questions or questioning the popular answers that do not fit the available evidence, rather than merely giving recycled answers or presenting flawed reasoning (Turabian 2018, 21, 40-41). Some of the most powerful academic writing does not propose solutions but merely identifies new questions that challenge the current mode of thought. Question orientation in paper writing is essential to the continued pursuit of truth, honesty about what I know, and a desire to help others in my community do new research. This process means that my argument must be question-oriented, present evidence as an answer only when it is incontrovertible, and present the unanswered questions openly and in a way that delineates the need for new information or better sources. 

HOW DO I FORMAT THE STRUCTURE OF A PAPER?

Structure papers in a tripartite form, with beginning, middle, and end. The opening is a thesis statement that asks pertinent questions and states the motivation behind the paper, plotting out the course of intended research and pointing the way to the end. The middle portion presents the information that answers those questions in an inductive, step-by-step capacity, building a logical narrative that satisfies the paper's purpose. The end restates the questions, draws the conclusions, ties up areas of insufficient knowledge, points out questions that are not answered and still need attention by the reader, and attempts to prompt an internal response in the reader (Turabian 2018, 75-126). Aside from this basic narrative structure, short and long-form papers, whitepapers, commentaries, critiques, and books have different structures depending upon their medium, manner of presentation, or my publication intentions. Reworking these papers must for presentation, either as a PowerPoint or an oral lecture, often reduced to headings, subheadings, significant questions, and answers. The structure depends upon the medium of communication and my needs as the author. I must be sensitive to context and work and rework my material to fit the situation's needs (Turabian 2018, 127-133).

HOW SHOULD I USE CITATIONS FOR REFERENCES? 

Once I decide the structure and format, I must add citations from notes or a study management program like Zotero, based upon the teacher's instructions, research needs, and style parameters of my writing. Short papers abbreviate this process, allowing for greater fluidity and utility. This structure uses the co-called "In Text" citation format and follows an "Author-Date" order (Turabian 2018, 143, 223-289). Long-form papers focus more on fastidious documentation, including many lengthy footnotes and generally coming across as more authoritative. These are "Notes-Bibliography Style" citations (Turabian 2018, 142-143, 169-222). Footnotes generally follow a "Last Name, First Name, Title, Edition, Place Name, Press Name, Publication Date, Page Number, and Last Accessed" format that has become nearly universal throughout academia. I should be careful to consult the Manual on all different types of citations since books, publications, magazines, online articles, personal correspondence, and government documents all have slightly different conventions that change how to list footnotes or a bibliography. All forms of writing may include a bibliography, which lists sources by the last name first, alphabetically, and otherwise in a format like footnotes. Books are long-form papers with chapter divisions and more extensive documentation and argumentation, allowing for the use of more quotations and often include illustrations, graphs, or artwork (Turabian 2018, 139-289).

CONCLUSION: WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Implementing Turabian's recommendations and steps for structuring, formatting, and documenting a paper is to create writing that reflects a natural process of discovery, sharing my findings with clarity and honesty, prompting an ongoing conversation within an established community, and establishing my credibility. Writing about the Turabian style during research for this paper has helped me answer personal questions about my Middle-American, Mid-Century, Middle-Class inheritance and embrace how it contributed to international communication, scientific progress, and world peace over the last 70 years. I have also answered my reader's questions about how to understand the process of research better, writing and editing for themselves, following Kate Turabian's thought process and formal structure for this paper. The Turabian Style changes my written monolog into an internal dialog, bringing the conversation full-circle and prompting a response on the part of my reader (Turabian 2018, 134-135) Do you agree?

REFERENCES

“6 Reasons Kate Turabian Is a Total Boss | The Writing Centaur | Liberty University.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?id=897649&blogpid=34071&pid=9720.

Cleenewerck, Laurent and Kabiru Gulma, 3rd ed. 2021. ACA-401/ACA-401D Coursepack: Period 1. Bangui, Central African Republic: Euclid University.

Ilhamsyarif’s Blog. “Who Is Kate Turabian?,” January 20, 2009. https://ilhamsyarif.wordpress.com/who-was-kate-turabian/.

Jenks, TyRee. “LibGuides: Turabian Citation Style Guide 9th Edition: Home.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://libguides.msubillings.edu/c.php?g=242157&p=1610210.

Turabian, Kate. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations 9th Edition. 9th ed. University of Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226430607.001.0001.

Turabian, Kate. A Manual for Writers, Eighth Edition. “Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers, Eighth Edition.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/turabian.html.