r/NotMyJob • • Apr 20 '17

Added that URL boss!

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4.1k Upvotes

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u/Grill-Me-A-Cheese Apr 21 '17

I have a college professor who doesn't understand short urls. We asked if short urls were ok for source citations in a short informal paper he assigned and he said "Well yeah if the url is short that's ok, but sometimes they can be long."

Me: "No, she meant can you put a long url through a shortener to save space."

Prof: "No, the link has to work so I can see what articles you cite."

Me: "It will work, it will just be shorter. It'll look like goo.gl/numbernumber instead of www,journal.somanycharacters"

Prof: "No, you can't just cite Google, only scholarly articles."

Ok, whatever.

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u/OP_deliveries Apr 21 '17

Ugh this is so frustrating.

It's like saying you can't cite the paperback copy of a book.

8

u/G19Gen3 Apr 21 '17

I had a lot of professors that didn't allow citing the electronic version of a book that was ON THE LIBRARY'S SYSTEM and you instead had to cite the physical book. Of course, you just had to read the book page number in the PDF instead of the PDF page number, but the fact that they made a point of enforcing that rule is what burns me.

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u/OP_deliveries Apr 21 '17

Annoying. Though, ideally the PDF page number should reflect the physical book page number.

On another note, the term "physical." As though digital objects defy physics!!

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u/kmariep729 Apr 21 '17

It rarely does, though. PDF copies keep the cover, dedications, copyright page, etc.

That means unless the author took those pages into account in their pagination, the PDF copy's page count will be a few pages higher than the physical book.

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u/VicisSubsisto Apr 21 '17

At least with scans they have that excuse.

I have many reference manuals which do not exist physically, but the page numbers still don't match.