When doing up a bibliography, when do you use the city with state? In some cases it seems obvious not to bother to cite the state = Washington:Smithsonian Institution Press. It also seems obvious when the publisher is a university = Gainesville:University of Florida Press. However, I have seen it cited like this: Gainesville, FL:University of Florida Press. Is there some rule about when to cite the city plus state?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: In general, you can get away with leaving out the state if it’s a “well-known” city, like New York or San Francisco. That’s fuzzy, but has always seemed to be the case. The examples that we give at http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/workscited/index.html show “New York” and “Chicago,” but “Greenwich, CT” regardless of the style being used. But you should still consult the particular style manual that you’re supposed to be using (MLA, APA, Turabian, etc.) for guidance to see if/how they address this.
Don’t quote AP on this, since it’s often forgotten, but the bottom line is that the citation is supposed to provide sufficient information for a reader to look up your source, so just try to keep that in mind.