Hi José, you should indeed follow the author-date format if you include a citation in a footnote or endnote. Note that in your example, you’d write “Mitchell” outside the parentheses, since your sentence doesn’t make sense without it: “see Mitchell (2002, 83).”

Hi Eric, yes, if you need to distinguish between two authors with the same last name in your notes, you should add an initial to distinguish them. Or if the authors’ first names also start with the same letter (e.g., Michael Brown and Melissa Brown), include their full names to make sure there’s no confusion.

Hi Francine,

When some of the information we show in our examples isn’t available for your source, you can usually just omit that part of the reference. Naturally, not all books will have editors, so you can just leave out this part if the book you’re citing doesn’t.

Hi Nathan,

Usually, if you want to provide additional information on top of the citation, you should write the citation itself first, followed by a period, and then another sentence with the extra information. For example:

1. Austen, Mansfield Park, 168. The passage in question describes …

Hi Chelsea,

If the whole paragraph is paraphrasing information from the same source, it’s reasonable to just cite that source at the end of the paragraph rather than repeatedly in every sentence. As long as it’s clear to the reader where the information comes from, this is a valid option.