"I finally settled into my mother's last version, making myself at home in it, cleaving to every detail as though it came from a Bible, referring anything that happened in my environment to that version, simply everything that I read or thought"¹.

The norm ISO 690 regulates the way in which references to other text are indicated (intertextual references not in a semiotic sense, but in a narrower, bibliographic sense). We must first pay attention to the difference between "bibliography" and "bibliographic references". By "bibliography" is meant a list of texts that is inserted at the end of the main text to propose further reading to the readers that, stimulated by what they just read, wish to continue their study or research on their own. Texts that are present in "bibliography", meant in such a prescriptive, strict sense, are not those which the notes and arguments of the main text refer to.

By "bibliographic references" is meant the list of all the texts to which footnotes or endnotes or comments in parenthesis refer to. If, in the text, a parenthesis is opened (or a footnote) and a name, a year and a page number appear with it, such a shortened reference refers to the list of bibliographic references, from which it is possible to refer back to the complete data of the edition [set of copies of a document whose data precisely match the copy from which they were taken] the references refers to. Let us see the norms concerning bibliographic references.

Abbreviations: it is possible to shorten the first letter of the first name of authors, publishers etc., provided that it is still recognizable (for example, if there are two authors with the same name and the same first initial, the name must be indicated in full).

Uppercase: rules concerning uppercase and lowercase letters must be followed according to the origin of texts. For example, English texts use capitals to begin the nouns in titles.

Punctuation: it must be used in a consistent way. If for example you decide to place a comma after the second name, the comma must be always there. Every separate element must be, in any case, indicated as such by use of punctuation.

Corrections and additions: Any modification of bibliographic data considered wrong and any addition must be indicated in square brackets. If for example the publication year indicated in a book is wrong, you must write:

2004 [2003]

or, to explain the meaning of an acronym:

JAPA [Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association]

Square brackets are also used to indicate all the items added as compared to what is indicated in the publication. For example "Milano [2003]" indicates a publication of 2003 that does not report any publication date, that is however known to the quoter.

Order of the elements: elements, as we saw in the previous unit, are to be listed in alphabetic order (more frequent) or numbered in order of appearance in the text (much less frequent). When they are in alphabetic order, and two texts begin with the same name (for example they are written by the same author), in the second entry, the author's name can be replaced by a dash, as in this example:

TOROP P. La traduzione totale, Modena, Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4.

' Towards the semiotics of translation, in Semiotica, n. 3-4, (128), Berlin - New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2000: 597-609.

Essential elements: essential elements in a lists of bibliographic references are: primary responsibility, title, publication data. By "primary responsibility" it is implied the author, if there is only one, the editor if it is an anthology, or the institution promoting the publication, if it is an edition for which there is no single person predominantly in charge as compared to the responsibility of the institution. In the case of ISO norms, for example, the primary responsibility to be indicated is exactly the ISO. By "author" a person or an institution responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of a document. By "document" ISO mean a set of recorded information units considered as a unit in a documentation process, independent of the physical form or features.

Complete elements: an item of a bibliographic list contains many elements, some of which are optional. Here is a complete list of the elements, the optional ones included, that must be listed in the order in which they are listed here.

For monographs [a non-periodical publication that is complete in one volume or published as single part or, in any case, in a given, exact number of volumes or parts]:

Surname, name of the author, or in any case primary responsibility (mandatory)

Title in italics (mandatory)

Secondary responsibility (optional): prefaces, translations, edition number etc.

Place of publication (in the language spoken in that town) (mandatory)

Publisher (mandatory) [person or organization responsible for the production and distribution of a document]

Year (mandatory)

Pages (optional)

Series (optional)

Series number (optional)

Specific data on the edition (optional)

ISBN [International Standard Book Number] (mandatory)

Examples:

Rossi, Antongiulio, Communicating with your Smile, translation from Italian by Gustavo Filetti, Berkeley (CA), New Editions, 2007, p. xix+344, Communication, 15, ISBN 01-7689-456-1.

For publications in periodicals [publication in any medium printed in successive parts, usually with chronological designation, with the tendency to be published for an indefinite time] (articles):

Surname, name of the author, or in any case primary responsibility (mandatory)

Title in italics (mandatory)

Secondary responsibility (optional): editing, prefaces, translations, edition number etc.

Name of the periodical in italics (mandatory)

Place of publicaiton (in the language spoken in that town) (optional)

Publisher (optional)

Year (mandatory)

Series number and number and date of the issue of the periodical (mandatory)

Pagination [pagination is the page interval within which the quoted article is developed, for example p. 17-61] (mandatory)

Specific data on the edition (optional)

ISSN [International Standard Serial Number] (optional)

Examples:

BERNASCONI, Silvio, Bankrupting a country and escaping prison, translation from Italian by George Bushes, in The Subjugation Herald, Washington (DC), WUP, 1991, 13 August, p. 13, ISSN 773917002009.

For contributions [independent units forming part of a document] to monographs (articles or essays on book, not periodical):

Surname, name of the author, or in any case primary responsibility (mandatory)

Title in italics of the single contribution (mandatory)

In

Monograph's (book's) title in italics (mandatory)

Place of publication (in the language spoken in that town) (optional)

Publisher (optional)

Year (mandatory)

Series (optional)

Series number (optional)

Specific data on the edition (optional)

ISBN [International Standard Book Number] (mandatory)

Pagination [pagination is the page interval within which the quoted article is developed, for example p. 17-61] (mandatory)

Examples:

TURNER, Michelangelo, Technical drawing, in Drawing Better, Sacramento (CA), Pictorial Editions, 2003, edited by Kathleen Lemonier, ISBN 01-4567-7874-X, p. 7-33.

 

In the next unit we'll see other cases and other examples.

 

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286.

International Standards Organization, norm 690.

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¹ Canetti 1999: 63.