cite your sources or i'll eat you
Kennesaw is citation style that is made for the internet age. Simple enough to use for minimal items (anonymous forum posts, social media posts, instant messages, art under usernames/pseudonyms), but bulky enough to use for academic papers, journals, films, books, and pretty much everything else. With only one base to use, there will not be a way to confuse your cited item (is this YouTube documentary a film, or a video recording?). Simply plug the information in, and you're all set!
[Surname, First Name (Optional: Middle Name)] (creative role). [Title of creation]. [DD Month YYYY]. [URL/ISBN/DOI/etc]. [page number(s)/timestamp(s)/etc].
- Creator Name: For cases of titles and suffixes (Dr., Jr., Her Majesty, III), place titles before the First Name and suffixes after the Surname.
- Creative Role: Director, author, speaker, editor, translator, artist, sculptor, actor, dancer, transcriber, and any other creative role you can think of. For ambiguous cases, creator or poster can be used, but I assume these will be rare due to people watermarking their memes. For cases of multiple creators, separate the names by semicolon (;). For bands, theater companies, or other artist/creator collectives, use the name of the group.
- Title of creation: Always in Italics. Title of the film, book, video, podcast, work of art, performance, or whatever creative category it falls under. If your work is untitled, use the following format: Untitled (five word description). If an unoriginal work is being cited (ex. a cover of a song, or a performance of a play), mention the original creator's name in the Title.
- DD Month YYYY: 11/3/2020 is ambiguous, right? Is it March 11 or November 3? This isn't a problem if you type 11 March 2020. Months will auto-translate in browsers, and are some of the easiest things to translate across languages, so this is the best option for everyone.
- URL: Self-explanatory. Paste the URL, ISBN, DOI, or other major database entry of your item. If it doesn't have one, such as a work of art uploaded to 4chan, use reverse image search or another method of your choice to find the original. When you have the original, ARCHIVE IT! Platforms are not your friends! Save that shit to an archive site of your choice! Hell, save the HTML of a webpage to your hard drive! Just keep that shit online!
- Page numbers/Timestamps: For discussing certain parts of a work. DD:HH:MM:SS format. Duration of films or videos is not needed, nor page count of papers or books. Only the selected scenes or text is required.
Example Citations
| Film | Levy, Shawn (director). Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. 18 December 2014. 1:00:06 - 1:14:00. |
| Book | Shusterman, Neal (author). Thunderhead. 9 January 2018. 9781442472471. pg. 40 - 52. |
| Performance | Atlanta Ballet (theater company). The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky). 4 December 2019. |
| YouTube Documentary | Olsen, Dan (director). Mantracks: a True Story of Fake Fossils. 10 January 2025. 20:11 - 22:02. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UDXdqqJQPE. |
| Anonymous Post | Anonymous (poster). Untitled (No. 5302759301). 3 March 2025. [4chan url here, item is an example that does not yet exist] |
| Work of Art Posted Online | Cooper, Trudy (artist); Bayne, Doug (author). Oglaf: Labyrinth. 22 May 2010. https://www.oglaf.com/labyrinth/. |
| Song | Lord Huron. The Night We Met. 7 April 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtlgYxa6BMU. |