| By Vexen Crabtree 2006 Apr 16
The Economist is a leading weekly news magazine, which features analysis of world news and events, and comprehensive thematic special reports in addition to the usual business news and commercial analysis. It is intellectual, factual, academic and scholarly, with careful researched articles reporting on major events in many fields of knowledge and current events. Bill Emmott was an editor of The Economist and before retiring, he described the magazine in these terms:
“One of the exceptional characteristics of this newspaper is the degree to which it still follows the principles and methods begun 163 years ago by its founder, James Wilson, and perfected by his son-in-law, Walter Bagehot. The Economist was launched to campaign for free trade and all forms of liberty, what proponents and detractors today call globalisation. [...] It did so with a formula that was three parts factual description and one part strongly held opinion or argumentative analysis. This is what we continue to attempt today.”Bill Emmott, editor of The Economist (2006)1
Periodicals I read include "New Scientist", "British Medical Journal" and "Skeptical Inquirer" (published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). There is an English medical library in Germany where I access medical papers and journals. Many academic journals include news reports of important articles in other academic journals, so that the British Medical Journal reports on articles in Acupuncture in Medicine, and The Economist reports on publishings in the New Scientist, BMJ, etc. I find The Economist to have the widest scope, yet still to be pleasingly in-depth.
For my comprehensive summary of UK news sources, read: "The Commercialist Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution" by Vexen Crabtree (2009)
The Guardian newspaper offers the best researched and most comprehensive reports on current events of all newspapers, relying least on wire copy and PR. Other quality newspapers in Britain include The Independent and The Telegraph (which I don't read) and The Times (according to the political analyst Bill Jones). In my summary of UK news media, the BBC also comes out very well.
There are also many trashy and useless newspapers in Britain, who frequently supply only entertainment and soft porn, mixed with fantastical and ridiculous stories and shockingly short-sighted and bigoted material. Such papers include The Sun, The Star and The Daily Mail.
The majority of books and periodicals I quote from are ones that I own. When I acquire a new book, I will revisit old texts and add quotes to it from the new source. I tend to write notes on books I read (and stamp them with my library stamp, much to the chagrin of my wife), which horrifies some people. I do not just read books, I use them. Francis Bacon said that book reading can "serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability". My usage of books is definitely in the latter category - not for kicks, or to look good, but to get use out of them. He said, "simple men admire" books, but "wise men use them"2.
All text and material has an inherent copyright whereby it belongs to the person who created it. A copyright notice is not required in order for things to be protected. You are legally permitted in the UK to take quotations that are within a legal definition of "reasonable usage".
When I am quoting, I always use double quotation marks unless sometimes when I'm only quoting a single word. Where square brackets appear, it denotes that I have edited the original. If the square brackets are: [...], then it means that I have skipped a part of their text for brevity or clarity. If there are words inside the square brackets, then they are there simply to make the quote make good grammatical sense.
If I reference someone inside a sentence, then it means that the immediate fact(s) preceding the reference are attributable to it. If I reference someone outside a sentence or at the end of a paragraph, then it means that multiple facts or quotes come from that one source. That way I can quote from the same source several times in a paragraph without having to insert ugly square brackets excessively.
At the bottom of many webpages, I have a "reference", "sources" or "bibliography" section. They are all the same thing. In alphabetical order by author. Under each author is a list of books or articles used by that author. The main title of the work is frequently in italics. Normally I state the year of original publication first, then go on to comment if I've used a later edition and give its year. I try to keep my biblio formatting relatively verbose to aid understanding, and so that casual readers can work it out, rather than use specialist academic shorthand that many professionals are fond of. The following are some notes on abbreviations and methods of referencing sources:
| By Vexen Crabtree 2006 Apr 16
Originally published 1999.
Last Updated: 2009 Jun 25
Bacon, Francis
"The Essays" (1625). Original works completed by 1625 by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Published in 1985 by Penguin Books, London, UK.
Jones, Bill (Ed.)
"Politics UK" (2004 5th ed). With Dennish Kavanagh, Michael Moran and Phillip Norton. First published 1991. Pearson Education Ltd.
