When you work on assignments for your classes, your instructors will require you to cite your sources. Generally, you should cite sources you use in your work:
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Things you MUST cite: • Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium • Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing • When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase • When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials • When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media
Things you do not have to cite: • Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject • When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments • When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc. • When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents) • When you are using generally-accepted facts, e.g., pollution is bad for the environment, including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities, e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally-accepted fact. |
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Citing your sources requires at least two things: in-text citations and a bibliography or reference list. The in-text citations provide a little information to the reader without taking up a lot of space on your page and lead the reader to a corresponding complete citation in your reference list or bibliography.
There are many styles of citations that all use different ways of putting together the citation information. However, they will all have a format for in-text citations and a format for full citations for the reference list or bibliography. To create citations you need to know 1) what kind of information source are you citing (i.e. a book, a scholarly article, an organization's Web site) and 2) what are the component parts: Author, Date, Title of Work, and Source Information.
The most common styles are listed below; if you need to use a citation style not listed here, see our Citation Help Research Guide or contact a librarian for help.
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Modern Languages Association (MLA) Format
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American Psychological Association (APA) Format
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Chicago (Turabian) Format
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Council of Science Editors (CSE) Format
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