Citation

Citation is the act of identifying sources. A citation names the author and work and provides sufficient bibliographic information to allow the reader to track down the original source. Sometimes students fall into plagiarism because they're not aware of the standards for scholarly citation. Here are some general guidelines for how to cite properly:

　　●Provide citations for direct quotations and paraphrases, for ideas, and for anything else you take from an original source, such as the structure of an argument.

　　●Don't skimp on research. Ending up with just a couple of works to cite generally is inadequate.

　　●If you draw a considerable number of references from an article or book, don't pretend that gathering them has been your own labor. Clarify what you've borrowed with a statement like Smith （1999） provides helpful references to this literature. Better yet, do the work of gathering citations yourself.

　　●Don't put a catch-all citation at the end of a paragraph. Cite as you use.

　　In general, as you do research and take notes, make sure to keep full bibliographic information notes. If you're sloppy at the start, you'll have no hope later on of reconstructing your citations.

　　For more specific formatting styles, see the upcoming sections on MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE citation styles.