Kate L. Turabian’s Followers (12)

Kate L. Turabian

Born

Chicago, The United States

Website

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/tu...

Genre

Nonfiction

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Who was Kate Turabian?
Kate Larimore Turabian (1893–1987) was the graduate school dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago for nearly three decades, from 1930 to 1958. She was also the editor of official publications for the university.

She was born Laura Kate Larimore on Chicago’s South Side, where she was also raised, graduating from Hyde Park High School. A serious illness prevented Kate from attending college. Instead she took a job as a typist at an advertising agency, where she worked alongside a young Sherwood Anderson.

She met her husband, Stephen Turabian, in 1919, and began working at the university as a departmental secretary a few years later. In 1930 she became the university’s dissertation secretary, a newly created po Who was Kate Turabian?
Kate Larimore Turabian (1893–1987) was the graduate school dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago for nearly three decades, from 1930 to 1958. She was also the editor of official publications for the university.

She was born Laura Kate Larimore on Chicago’s South Side, where she was also raised, graduating from Hyde Park High School. A serious illness prevented Kate from attending college. Instead she took a job as a typist at an advertising agency, where she worked alongside a young Sherwood Anderson.

She met her husband, Stephen Turabian, in 1919, and began working at the university as a departmental secretary a few years later. In 1930 she became the university’s dissertation secretary, a newly created position in which every accepted doctoral thesis had to cross her desk. It was there that she wrote a small pamphlet describing the correct style for writing college dissertations. That pamphlet eventually became A Manual for Writers and has gone on to sell more than nine million copies in eight editions. She also authored The Student’s Guide for Writing College Papers.

Chicago has always insisted on the highest standards for the substantive content of dissertations at the university; Kate Turabian enforced the highest standards for the form of those dissertations as well. A Manual for Writers carried her reputation for exactitude well beyond the halls of Chicago.

One of her colleagues in the Office of Official Publications, Lois F. Madsen, described Kate as

a legend on the University of Chicago quadrangles.… A devout Episcopalian, an accomplished cook, an enthusiastic and adventurous traveler, and a voracious reader whose erudition earned the respect of scholars of all ranks despite her lack of the customary academic credentials. After her years of devoted service to the University, trudging in her sturdy oxfords from her apartment on the south side of the Midway to her office on the third floor of the Administration building, she acceded to her husband Stephen’s longing for a warmer clime, and retired to California.
Her husband died in 1967, while they were on a vacation in Paris. Kate passed away twenty years later, at the age of ninety-four. John Marshall wrote a warm tribute in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 27, 1987:

Kate L. Turabian was our trusted guide and mentor, the absolute authority, the one who knew all there was to know about the strange world of proper term papers.… A Manual for Writers was one of the first books we bought in college and it was one of the only books we kept with us through all four years and probably beyond. To write a term paper without a well-worn copy of Turabian handy was unthinkable. Our writing on term papers might be weak, our research haphazard, our insights sophomoric, but, thanks to Kate L. Turabian, our footnotes could always be absolutely flawless.

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Average rating: 3.98 · 3,320 ratings · 201 reviews · 5 distinct works • Similar authors

	A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers by Kate L. Turabian, Wayne C. Booth (Editor), Gregory G. Colomb (Editor) 3.99 avg rating — 3,191 ratings — published 1955 — 62 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Student's Guide to Writing College Papers by Kate L. Turabian (Editor), Gregory G. Colomb (Editor), Joseph M. Williams (Editor) 3.70 avg rating — 113 ratings — published 1963 — 30 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations 3.09 avg rating — 11 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	NEW-STUDENT'S GUIDE TO WRITING COLLEGE PAPERS, FIFTH EDITION really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Eigo Ronbun No Kakikata by Kate L. Turabian, 高橋作太郎 (翻訳) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1980	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Kate L. Turabian (?)

“Most of us would rather read than write. There is always another article to read, one more source to track down, just a bit more data to gather. But well before you’ve done all the research you’d like to do, there comes a point when you must start thinking about the first draft of your report.”
― Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers

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“This may be the time to address a problem that afflicts even experienced researchers and at some point will probably afflict you. As you shuffle through hundreds of notes and a dozen lines of thought, you start feeling that you’re not just spinning your wheels but spiraling down into a black hole of confusion, paralyzed by what seems to be an increasingly complex and ultimately unmanageable task. The bad news is that there’s no sure way to avoid such moments. The good news is that most of us have them and they usually pass. Yours will too if you keep moving along, following your plan, taking on small and manageable tasks instead of trying to confront the complexity of the whole project. It’s another reason to start early, to break a big project into its smallest steps, and to set achievable deadlines,”
― Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers

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“Too many students, both graduate and undergraduate, think that the aim of education is to memorize settled answers to someone else's questions. It is not. It is to learn to find your own answers to your own questions. To do that, you must learn to wonder about things, to let them puzzle you--particularly things that seem most commonplace.”
― Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers

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Kate L. Turabian’s Followers (12)

Kate L. Turabian

Combine EditionsKate L. Turabian’s books

Combine Editions
Kate L. Turabian’s books