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Can I get some help on the correct way to cite a work in Chinese? I am looking for the snippets:

page
pages
p.
pp.
cited on page 15
cited on pages 15, 17, 19
cit. on p. 15
cit. on pp. 15, 17, 19

and so far I have come up with these literal translations, that I am not sure are current usage in citation.

頁
頁面
p。
頁數
第15頁引用
第 15、17、19 頁引用
引用。上頁。 15
引用。第 15、17、19 頁

Would someone, confirm this, correct it or point me to the right direction or some work where I can see any material on this or examples?

2 Answers 2

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Chinese doesn't have plurals [with a handful of exceptions] nor Latin abbreviations, so in Chinese "page", "pages", "p.", "pp." are all the same:

  • page --- 頁
  • pages --- 頁
  • p. --- 頁
  • pp. --- 頁

頁 is used directly after a number to indicate page numbers, such as 15頁 (page 15) or 15、17、19頁 (pages 15, 17, and 19). This is what you'll see e.g. listed at the bottom of multi-page websites (e.g., webnovels).

It can also be prefixed with 第, which changes these numbers into ordinals, such as 第15頁 (the 15th page) or 第15、17、19頁 (the 15th, 17th, and 19th pages). This sounds clunky in English, but it's commonly used in Chinese. And you can also add "and" to the list of numbers, such as in 第15、17和19頁, but this doesn't change the meaning.

The word 頁面 also means "page", but often a page in a book or a webpage ("the dimensions of the page"), and is not normally used for page numbers. The word 頁數 refers to the number of pages (not page numbers), and is also not relevant here. The punctuation mark 。 is a full stop used at the end of sentences and is not used for abbreviations in Chinese, so get rid of that entirely. The word 上頁 means "previous page", and doesn't seem relevant here. 引用 = "to cite" is the correct choice of verb here (noting that it also means "to quote").

Note that e.g. "cited on page 15" implies that on page 15, I will find a citation to a source (it does not mean the source is page 15).

These are all basically the same:

  • cited on page 15 --- 在第15頁引用
  • cited on pages 15, 17, 19 --- 在第15、17、19頁引用
  • cit. on p. 15 --- 在第15頁引用
  • cit. on pp. 15, 17, 19 --- 在第15、17、19頁引用

The 在 here (in general 在 has many functions) is like the preposition "on"; it's not always necessary. And we could also use 在第15、17和19頁引用, as above.

To use this correctly, you'll need to understand the grammar involved, which would be far too involved for a single answer. But here are some examples that hopefully give the right idea:

參閱第15、17、19頁引用的論文。
Refer to the papers cited on pages 15, 17, and 19.

在第15、17、19頁本論文引用劍橋字典。
On pages 15, 17, and 19, this paper cites the Cambridge Dictionary.

Strunk 與 White(第 15 頁引用)是一部有影響力的著作。
Strunk and White (cited on page 15) is an influential work.

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  • How do you say that a book has 256 pages? Is that different from "256頁" ? Would that be "256頁數" ?
    – Paulo Ney
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:25
  • And what is the difference between what you say in th text (在第15頁引用) and what you list in the example (第 15 頁引用, there is a difference in the first character.
    – Paulo Ney
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:33
  • There's multiple ways to express these things; your question makes me think you're after an academic, succinct writing style (like 共256頁 = "total 256 pages") instead of full sentences (like 這本書一共有256頁 = "this book has 256 pages in total"). 頁數 can be thought of as a mathematical variable, so you might say 頁數超過了200 = "the number of pages exceeds 200" or see "頁數:256" when buying books online. Here, the 在 is the preposition "on" in "cited on pages ..."; it might be omitted e.g., in an academic paper, but it depends. If there's more questions, you're probably better off asking a new question.
    – Becky 李蓓
    Commented Aug 22 at 6:39
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Use the citation management software Zotero. Go to its style manager and add Chinese citation styles such as "China National Standard GB/T 7714-2005" which allows automatic formatting. The Zotero forum has several pages on Chinese citations, including

See examples of citations of Chinese articles in a Chinese manuscript at https://uwcchina.libguides.com/cite/chinese

To add citations of English articles in a Chinese manuscript, refer to https://ssdpp.bnu.edu.cn/docs/20190318161529303581.pdf.

To add citations of Chinese articles in an English manuscript, refer to https://clta-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CSLChineseFormattingGuidelines2018Jan.pdf.

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