Canvas Content Repository: Citing sources

Why Cite Sources?

You must always cite the information you use in a paper or project. There are many reasons for citing sources beyond your instructor's requirements for the project:

• It allows the reader to verify sources for themselves.
• It boosts credibility and support for your arguments.
• It gives credit to the author or source of the work.
• It helps you avoid plagiarism.

What do you have to cite?

You must cite everything that isn't your original work. This includes facts, statistics, theories, ideas, graphs, and images. Even when you put information from another source into your own words by paraphrasing or summarizing, you must cite where you got the information. That way, your reader can understand what you've learned from your sources as well as what you're adding to them.

What don't you have to cite?

There's one important exception to citing everything that isn't your original idea: common knowledge. If the same information can be found in multiple sources and is generally well known, you don't need to provide a citation for it. Here are some examples:

• The Earth orbits the Sun.
• Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina.
• A square is a shape with four equal sides and four right angles.
• Cereal is often eaten with milk.

Common knowledge can also depend on context. Some information that is considered common knowledge in one discipline may not be common knowledge to a general audience. 

If you aren't sure whether something is common knowledge or not, it's best to cite just in case. You can also check with your instructor about what they would recommend.

How do you cite?

What your citations look like will depend on the style you're using, but they all have something in common: Citations have two parts, and both are required for your citation to be complete.

1. In-text: Within the body of your paper, you'll include a short reference alongside the ideas that you used from the resource. This might be a parenthetical citation (like in APA or MLA Styles) or a superscript number (like in Chicago Notes-Bibliography or AMA Styles).
2. Full citation: At the end of your paper, you'll have a list of all the sources you referenced. That list will have the complete information for all of those sources, so that your reader can find the same information you did. 

The in-text portion directs your reader to the full citation at the end.