14
One reason using sources is confusing for students is that different disciplines abide by different sets of rules for documenting information. For many liberal arts courses such as composition, humanities, and literature, you will be directed to use MLA Style from the Modern Language Association. For sciences, including health, physical, biological, and social sciences, typically, APA Style from the American Psychological Association is used.
There are other formatting styles, but because this module is meant to serve as a fundamental general overview and the two most commonly used styles at FSCJ are MLA and APA, we will only touch on these two formats.
Before citing sources in your work, determine which “style” of citation your professor would like you to use and the “edition” of the manual or guide. The MLA Handbook for Writers and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association publishes updates every few years. Often, this information will be found on the syllabus for your course.
Each citation style has its own rules for punctuation, capitalization, font, format, etc. Take a look at this example of the same article cited in two different styles:
- APA Style
- Ball, P. (2020). The magic of fire in space. New Scientist, 247(3300), 41–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(20)31627-4
- MLA Style
- Ball, Philip.
The Magic of Fire in Space.
New Scientist, vol. 247, no. 3300, Sept. 2020, pp. 41–46. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(20)31627-4.
These examples are how the sources appear on the list of sources at the end of their respective papers. For the APA, this list is called a references page, while for the MLA, it is called a works cited page. Notice common elements such as author’s name, title, publisher, and date published in the examples above. Depending on the source and style used, these elements will be recorded differently.
Plagiarism and Citation
What is plagiarism, and how do we avoid it? Plagiarism is using someone else’s words, thoughts, or ideas as your own without crediting the original source. While conducting research for a paper, you will likely explore multiple sources of information (books, journal articles, videos, etc.). After evaluation, if you decide to use any of these sources in your writing, you will need to credit your sources properly to ensure you are not plagiarizing.
Properly crediting your sources is called citation. We will discuss the basics of proper citation later in the module.
Remember, plagiarism is a serious academic offense at FSCJ and all other colleges and universities. If discovered, it can result in disciplinary actions ranging from failure (on the assignment or course) to expulsion. The following short video will help you understand the five basic types of plagiarism and the range of their severity. Even minor instances can affect your grades, so please watch carefully!
Video: What is Plagiarism? by Scribbr
When writing a paper, you will want to use your own words and ideas as much as possible, but when you need to, there are three ways to use someone else’s work in your writing.
Select each box to reveal its information.
This video will show you exactly how in-text citation is done:
As we have seen, citation is the practice of giving proper credit to any authors whose work you quote, paraphrase, or summarize during the writing of your paper. A citation records identifying information about a specific source, such as author, title, date of publication, etc. The citation lets your reader know when you are using someone else’s ideas and where to find the original source. Properly citing your sources is the key to avoiding plagiarism. Watch the following video for a brief introduction to citations.
Video: Citation: A (Very) Brief Introduction by NC State University Libraries
One very confusing situation that often comes up when citing a source occurs when you want to quote the exact words of someone who is already being quoted by the source you are using! In other words, the words you are quoting are not those of your source’s author but of someone that author is quoting. For example, imagine that this is the part of a source you are interested in using:
The effects of solitary confinement can be catastrophic, and health care professionals argue vehemently for its abolition. Dr. Murray Baker, who has worked with prisoners for decades, argues that “confinement like this for long periods is quite simply the cruelest, most debilitating kind of torture a society could deign to practice. Its use is unconscionable.”
—Andrea Skate, from her 2013 book The Cruelest Cage, 173
Citing a source like this (which often is called an embedded source since it is embedded or housed inside another source) is called creating an indirect citation, and the MLA and APA formats have different rules for doing it.
Click on each type to reveal more information.
Another confusing situation arises when a source you want to cite either has no author attributed to it or, because it is an online source, it has no page numbers.
In the case of a source without an author, both the MLA and APA formats require you to mention the next most important piece of information about that source when you create an in-text citation. This piece of information will typically end up being the first thing you list for that source on the list of sources at the end of your paper (your works cited or references page).
If you are dealing with a book, the book’s title will usually be what you will mention in an in-text citation. Book titles always appear in italics when you cite them.
If you are dealing with a magazine, newspaper, or journal article, the article title is the thing you will mention. If you are citing a web page, usually the title of the page you are citing (not the overall website but the specific page or article you are referencing on that site) is what you will mention. In the case of all such articles, you put the titles inside quotation marks.
Examples
Book with no author, MLA:
According to Science and Service, there are well over 200,000 science-based jobs being performed in the military (25).
Book with no author, APA:
According to Science and Service (2015), there are well over 200,000 science-based jobs being performed in the military (p. 25).
Note that when the APA style requires the capitalization of important words in titles when cited inside the text but not when they are included on the references page. In this example, Science and Service uses title case, but on the references page, this title would appear as Science and service.
Article with no author, MLA:
The article “Controversies in Online Communities” breaks down several ways that online communication becomes toxic, including “micro-aggression, gas lighting, race basting, breaking the sacred, personal information dumps, friend forging, and triggering” (127).
Article with no author, APA:
The article “Controversies in Online Communities” (2016) breaks down several ways that online communication becomes toxic, including “micro-aggression, gas lighting, race basting, breaking the sacred, personal information dumps, friend forging, and triggering” (p. 127).
Note that the APA versions include dates (and the “p.” in front of the page numbers).
As for sources without page numbers like web-based articles, the MLA does not require any additional work; you just present the author or book/article title (if there is no author) in the signal phrase or parenthetical citation. The APA, however, requires that you list paragraph numbers if the paragraphs are numbered in the source (usually you will see those numbers in the right margin). If no paragraph numbers are provided, you are required to provide the section of the source in which the cited material appears and then count the paragraphs from the beginning of that section and present that number, too.
Examples
Source with no page numbers but with paragraph numbers, APA:
According to Millen (2016), “today’s superheroes embody a strange combination of elevated archetypal dignity and a base tendency to engage in hyper-violence due to the commercial interests that control their destinies” (para. 7).
Source with no page or paragraph numbers, APA:
Marshall (2016) argues that “resistance can’t take the form of the very thing it resists, for it then becomes a hypocritical play of force that threatens the integrity of the resistor” (Violence in Context section, para. 3).
There are many, many more in-text citation situations that you will encounter as you write research papers in college and beyond. We can only provide a basic overview here. As you move forward with your education, you will likely want to purchase the MLA Handbook or the Publication Manual of the APA, depending on which format your discipline uses. Many online resources are available, as well.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this module, every research paper must include a list of the sources used within the paper. This list appears as the very last page of a paper (it should always be on its own page). The MLA calls this list a works cited page, while the APA calls it a references page.
We have included both a sample works cited page in this module 6 and a sample references page in module 5. Pay close attention to how the sources are formatted on those sample pages. Based on these examples, you will notice the following general attributes of both MLA and APA source lists.
- The title of the pages (Works Cited or References) appears at the top and is centered; it is NOT bolded, underlined, or italicized, and it has the same font size as the rest of the paper.
- The pages are double-spaced, just like the formatting of the rest of the paper.
- Each entry on the page is listed in alphabetical order according to the first letter of whatever starts the entry. There are no bullets or numbers in the list.
- Each entry that is longer than one line has a hanging indent; this means that the second (and all subsequent) lines are indented half of an inch from the left margin.
Because there are so many different kinds of sources, we will only be able to discuss a few examples in this module to provide you with a general idea of the information you need to include on an accurate works cited or references page. More information and examples are available in the course. See the Student Resources page in the Start Here Module.
Select each box to reveal its information.
One significant advantage of using digital library resources is that most library ebooks and ejournals come with auto-generated citations in various styles. Hooray! You won’t have to go through the painstaking process of creating your citations by hand.
However, auto-generated citations often include errors, and it can be tricky to correctly format a “copy and pasted” citation in a Word document. Watch the following video to learn the most common citation errors and how to quickly and easily format citations in Word. You’ll be doing this yourself in this module’s assignment: Correctly Format Auto-Generated Citations, so be sure to watch closely.
Video: Getting the Most Out of Database Citation Generators by FSCJ Library Learning Commons
“Citation: A (Very) Brief Introduction” by NC State University Libraries is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Content by Florida State College at Jacksonville is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Scribbr. (2020, January 23). What is plagiarism? [Video]
