7 Step 7 | Citations
Though citations can seem like a daunting task, they are integral to the work of legitimizing your research. Without proper citation skills, you will be unable to format your paper and properly quote the scholarship you sourced through the library and the web.
Style Manuals
Style manuals have rules for how to cite sources properly and consistently. Your professor will usually tell you which style manual you should follow for your papers in class. Style manuals help you structure your writing in a way that is understood by an audience of subject experts. For example, sociologists typically use ASA, the Style Guide from the American Sociological Association; those in psychology and related fields might use APA, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and so on. Within this toolkit we utilized MLA, which is commonly used in English composition courses.
Example of Citation Used In Sample Paper
| Scholarly | Popular |
| Dasuike, Akiba, and Rebecca Garte. “Leveraging AI Tools in University Writing Instruction: Enhancing Student Success While Upholding Academic Integrity.” Journal of Interactive Learning Research, vol. 35, no. 4, Jan. 2024, pp. 467-80. https://doi.org/10.70725/355152wkijve | Gelernter, David. “Artificial Intelligence Wasn’t Born Yesterday.” WSJ Opinion, Wall Street Journal, 18 Sept. 2024, www.wsj.com/opinion/artificial-intelligence-wasnt-born-yesterday-1950s-history-policy-db8781f2. |
Creating Bibliographies
At the end of your project, you will need to compile the sources you used into a bibliography. A bibliography, sometimes called “references” or “works cited,” is a comprehensive list of citations at the end of a project. The rules for organizing and formatting a bibliography differ depending on which style you are using, but the style guide should provide guidance on how to do this consistently.
Citation management tools
Citation management tools can make it easier to organize and use sources. These tools help you collect, organize, and store citations and documents as you find them online. They also work with word processors such as Word and Google Docs to automatically insert citations and bibliographies into a document. You pick a style manual, and the tool customizes your citations to match. If you are working on a group project, you can create a shared folder for your sources that everyone can add to and update.
Always double check that your citations are complete and formatted correctly. Some websites, indexes, and even the source files themselves may contain errors, which then become errors in your citations. These tools are only designed to use the information they are given, even if that information is incorrect.
Checklist
- Have you completed a rough draft outline?
- Have you completed a final draft?
- Have you checked to see if your in-text citations are correct?
- Have you made sure to include all the resources you cited in your bibliography?
- Is your paper formatted properly?
- Does your paper have a title?
- If so, you are ready to submit your assignment!
Information Adapted from Library 1600: Introduction to College-Level Research | Current contributors include: Abbey K. Elder, Rano Marupova, Kris Stacy-Bates, Cara B. Stone, and Erin Thomas. CC BY-SA 4.0
