The Catholic Writers Guild

Your Author Toolkit: Copyright, Citations, and Permissions

Copyright, one might say, makes the publishing world go ‘round. The basic principle is founded in justice: one’s intellectual artistry deserves the same respect as one’s physical artistry. What you write (within certain bounds) is yours, and therefore not to be copied without attribution or permission.

Like the label on a medicine bottle, check with an editor before publishing.

Citations

Citations, a.k.a. attributions, can take a number of forms, but the gist is that if you are quoting something directly, or paraphrasing a specific idea, you must include some basic information about the source material to avoid plagiarism. So what should you do when you quote another writer, and what should you expect from others when they quote you? Let’s talk about that.

Footnotes appear at the bottom of a page; endnotes appear in a section at the back of the book. Both contain the same content: title, author, publication information, and page or section number. Whether a book uses one or the other depends on a publisher’s preferred style, the genre and audience of a book, and the reader’s needs — and, at times, the author’s preference.

Parenthetical citations appear at the end of the quote itself, and usually are an abbreviated form of a citation, for example “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1). In the case of parenthetical citations, the full citation is given in a footnote or endnote the first time that the source material appears. If you’re citing often from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, the first quote would be a footnote or endnote, and anytime after that you could use (CCC 1234). In cases of scripture, often the translation information will be noted on the copyright page,

In some cases, typically for more popular and less academic works, a full citation isn’t required. I could say that Pope Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae, says “This brilliant and intelligent quote,” and the author’s name and title of the work is sufficient as an in-line citation. Sometimes you’ll see a mix of in-line and full citations, depending on the nature of the quote. As an editor, I’ll recommend in a devotional, for instance, that a papal document be treated like above, but a reference to a technical study be cited in full because the data is time-bound and there may be multiple sources of a similar style.

There are oodles of sources on the internet that can help you format specific citations. Pick one — the Chicago Manual of Style is de rigeur for most trade books and fiction — and BE CONSISTENT. Your readers will always notice and be thrown off by inconsistency.

Permissions

The rules of when to seek permission to use something are many and varied, and better articles than mine have been written — I suggest starting here for further research into fair use, public domain, etc. As a rule of thumb, if you are using a high percentage of something (you are quoting a large chunk of a short article) or a quote is taking up a high percentage of your work (a large chunk of your article is a direct quote from another source), you need to seek permission of the copyright holder to use it.

The copyright holder may charge a fee for use of the material, or simply ask for a credit line — a specific attribution that would be placed on the copyright page of the book or where the quote appears. Said copyright holder might ask for both, or refuse permission altogether, or request to read the context before giving permission.

Scripture Translations

Specific limits on fair use of scripture translations are established by the copyright holder. Some set limits by verses, others by total word count, and it is always in your best interest to follow those guidelines and request permission for anything beyond what is counted as fair use. Always double-check with the owner of the translation’s copyright; most will make that information easily available.

And lest you be inclined to castigate “the Church” for forcing you to pay for large chunks of scripture, bear in mind the intellectual rights of the dozens of scholars whose effort went into creating that translation, not to mention the various editors involved in the review process — and assume that the licensing fees are replenishing the coffers of whoever paid those scholars at the time.

Bibliography, etc.

A bibliography or works cited is a section at the end of a work that includes the title, author, and publication data for all quotation sources. This is expected for academic works, and occasionally beneficial for more popular works. Generally more helpful for popular works is a list of “recommended reading”, or an appendix that provides ancillary material to support the needs of the reader.

A few last essentials

• Never, ever, write “studies show that” without citing a direct source.
• Never, ever, quote song lyrics directly without seeking — and being willing to pay for — permission. Song lyrics are heavily monitored and very expensive to use, and it is not worth it.
• When citing yourself in a previously published work, including blogs, it is always recommended to acknowledge that in a citation. Usually I’d recommend something like “Much of this chapter is adapted from my previous book, [insert info here].”
• Publishing houses often have specific style guides that overrule one detail or another of their main style guide (you’ll notice I use spaces on either side of my em dashes, because that’s in OSV’s house style guide.) Do not argue with the house style guide. If you think it’s weird, get a taste of the New Yorker’s style guide.

 

Copyright 2023 Rebecca Martin