8-How to Cite Sources
To write a proper citation we recommend following these steps, which will help you maintain accuracy and clarity in acknowledging sources.
Step 1: Choose Your Citation Style
Find out the name of the citation style you must use from your instructor, the directions for an assignment, or what you know your audience or publisher expects. Then search for your style at the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) or use Google or Bing to find your style’s stylebook/handbook and then purchase it or ask for it at a library. The FSCJ Resources Appendix in the back of this textbook provides links to APA and MLA Style guides and handbooks as well.
Step 2: Create In-Text Citations
Find and read your style’s rules about in-text citations, which are usually very thorough. Luckily, there are usually examples provided that make it a lot easier to learn the rules.
Tip: Style Guides are Usually Very Thorough
For instance, your style guide my have different rules for when you are citing:
- Quotations rather than summaries rather than paraphrases.
- Long, as opposed to short, quotations.
- Sources with one or multiple authors.
- Books, journal articles, interviews and email, or electronic sources.
EXAMPLE: Using a Style Guide to Create an In-Text Citation
Imagine that you’re using APA style and have the APA style guide rules for in-text citations open in Purdue OWL. In your psychogeography paper, you want to quote the authors of the book The Experience of Nature, Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, which was published in 1989. What you want to quote is from page 38 of the book.
Here’s what you want to quote:
“The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked.”
1. Skim the headings in the style guide to remind yourself of what its rules concern.
Since it has rules about the length of quotations, you count the number of words in what you want to quote and find that your quote has 38, which is within the range for short quotations (less than 40), according to the APA style guide. According to the rule for short quotations, you see that you’re supposed to introduce the quote by attributing the quote to the authors (last names only) and adding the publication date in parentheses. You write:
According to Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked.”
2. Then you notice that the example in the style guide includes the page number on which you found the quotation. It appears at the end of the quote (in parentheses and outside the quote marks but before the period ending the quotation). So you add that:
According to the Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked” (p.38).
3. So you have your first in-text citation for your final product:
According to Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked” (p.38).
For more examples of in-text or parenthetical citations, go to the FSCJ APA 7th Edition LibGuide.
Step 3: Study Your Style’s Rules for Bibliographic Citations
Next, you will need a full bibliographic citation for the same source. This citation will appear on the Bibliography page or References page (APA Style) or Works Cited page (MLA Style). We’re using APA style here, so the Bibliography page is called References. Bibliographic citations usually contain more publication facts than you used for your in-text citation, and the formatting for all of them is very specific.
Bibliographic Citation Rules Are Very Specific
Rules vary for sources–depending, for instance, on whether they are books, journal articles, or online sources.
- Sometimes lines of the citation must be indented (hanging line).
- Authors’ names usually appear last name first.
- Authors’ first names may be initials instead of spelled out.
- Names of sources may or may not have to be in full.
- Names of some kinds of sources may have to be italicized.
- Names of some sources may have to be in quotes.
- Dates of publication appear in different places, depending on the style.
- Some styles require Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) in the citations for online sources.
Step 4: Identify Citation Elements
Figure out the bibliographic citation rules that apply to the source for which you have just created an in-text citation. Then apply them to create your first bibliographic citation.
Example: Using a Style Guide to Create a Bibliographic Citation
You will continue using APA style and have the APA style guide rules for bibliographic citations open in OWL. Your full citation will be for the book called The Experience of Nature, written by Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan and published in 1989 (for which you just created an in-text citation).
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You know your source is a book, so look for style guide rules and examples about books. In general, book citations in APA require author name, publication year, book title, and publisher name. The author’s name will be set up Last Name, F.I. (first initial).
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Since you have two authors, you look for a rule regarding that situation, which requires a comma between the authors and an ampersand between the names. So you write: Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S.
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The APA style rules for a book say the publication date goes in parentheses after the authors, followed by a period. The title of the book is italicized, and only the first word in the title, subtitle, and proper names are capitalized. You look at examples and then apply the rules to the publication information you know about your source: Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature.
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Next, the rules and examples of book citations show the publisher’s name. So you find that information about your source (usually on the title page or its back; you can also look at the bibliographic record in the library catalog) and write: Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature. Cambridge University Press.
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To create a hanging line in Word, highlight the whole citation, open the Paragraph Settings window, then go to the Indentation options. Under the “Special” drop-down menu, click “Hanging.” It defaults to 0.5″ which is what you need.
Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature. Cambridge University Press.
Congratulations! You have created the first bibliographic citation for your final product.
Step 5: Repeat the steps for creating an in-text citation and a bibliographic citation for each of your sources.
Use examples from the FSCJ Citation Style LibGuides, Purdue OWL website, or style handbooks to create bibliographic citations for other types of sources. Pay attention to the information required for various electronic and print sources. For example, if you were using the chapter from an edited book, then you would also need to include the chapter title, chapter author(s), page range for the chapter, and name of editor(s) in your book citation.
Likewise, you would not want to treat all electronic sources as a website–some might actually be newspaper, magazine, or journal articles from a database. Pay particular attention to what is and is not capitalized, italicized or in quotation marks; and to what punctuation and spaces separate each part of the citation that the example illustrates.
Movie: Finding the Information You Need: PDF and HTML Journal Articles
View video : https://youtu.be/0JtlWDsHfdE
Movie: Finding the Information You Need: Citing Information for Web and Online Multimedia Sources
View video: https://youtu.be/MBuGA4fjN5E
Tip: Citation Software
If you like, you can use citation generator software to arrange the information needed for your citation according to the style guide you chose. Learn more later in this section.