Citing Sources
Jenifer Kurtz
WHY SHOULD I CITE?
Whenever you use sources, it is important that you document them completely and accurately. You make your work more useful to your reader through complete and careful documentation, so you should think of documentation as essential rather than as an “add on” tacked on at the last minute.
When asked why you should cite your sources, many students reply, “So you don’t get accused of pla- giarizing.” It is true that you must provide citations crediting others’ work so as to avoid plagiarism, but scholars use citations for many other (and more important!) reasons:
- To make your arguments more credible. You want to use the very best evidence to support your claims. For example, if you are citing a statistic about a disease, you should be sure to use a credible, reputable source like the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control (CDC). When you tell your reader the statistic comes from such a source, she will know to trust it– and thereby trust your argument more.
- To show you’ve done your homework. You want to make it clear to your audience that you’ve researched your subject, tried hard to inform yourself, and know what you are talking about. As you dive deeper into your research, you will probably find certain authors are experts on the topic and are mentioned in most of the articles and books. You should read these experts’ works and incorporate them into your paper.
- To build a foundation for your paper. Great breakthroughs in scholarship are accomplished by building on the earlier, groundbreaking work of others. For example, Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation would not have been possible without Johannes Kepler’s law of planetary motion. What articles, books, and texts, inspired you to create your argument? You are not the first person to ever consider this issue. You want to provide references to the works which led to your thesis.
- To allow your readers to find the sources for themselves. Someone interested in your topic may be inspired to read some of the sources you used to write your paper. The citation within the paper tells readers what part of your argument is addressed by a particular source, and the full citation in the bibliography provides the information needed to track down that original research.
What Should I Cite?
The easy answer is that all information that you get from a source needs to be cited. But, the real answer is a bit more complex. You do need to cite anytime you:
- Copy verbatim (word for word) from a source. This is known as a direct quote, and is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
- Use some of the exact phrases in a sentence or paragraph, even if you are not copying the whole sentence or paragraph.
- Use original information that you have obtained from an interview or conversation with someone.
- Include information you learned from a source that you did not know before, even if you put it in your own words.
- Do not use the exact sentence or phrase but paraphrase it, or use the ideas inherent in the exact sentence or phrase, you must cite your source. (Paraphrasing will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.)
- Offer an overview of information that you learned from a source that you did not know before. (This will be discussed in more detail in the “Summarizing” section later in this chapter).
- Share ideas that you got from a source, that you did not know before.
- Reprint images, maps, diagrams, charts, or tables from a source.
- Incorporate into your essay a distinct or specific phrase or wording of a concept that you got from a source.
However, as you do research, you will undoubtedly come across information that you already know, or information that you find repeated in multiple sources. Whether to cite this information or not becomes a bit trickier, as you need to decide it if is common knowledge or not.
What is common knowledge?
Common knowledge is information that is accepted and known so widely you do not need to cite it:
- Common sayings or cliches. Examples: Curiosity killed the cat. Ignorance is bliss.
- Facts that can be easily verified. As you are conducting your research on a topic, you will see the same facts repeated over and over. Example: You are writing a paper on presidential elections, and you want to mention that Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Although you might not have known this fact before your research, you have seen it multiple times and no one ever argues about it.
- Facts that you can safely assume your readers know. Examples: Richmond is the capital of Virginia. The North won the U.S. Civil War. Fish breathe using gills.
Not all facts are common knowledge. You will still need to cite:
- Facts that surprise you or your reader. Example: Michelangelo was shorter than average (Hughes and Elam 4).
- Facts that include statistics or other numbers. Example: As of June 2009, forty-two states had laws that explicitly ban gay marriage, and six states have legalized it (U.S. Department of Labor).
- If you use the exact words of another writer, even if the content could be considered common knowledge. Example: Lincoln’s first campaign dates to “1832, when he ran as a Whig for the Illinois state legislature from the town of New Salem and lost” (Lincoln 451).
