LibGuides: HON 290: Why Citations Matter

Why Citations Matter

We must cite sources to only only give credit where credit is due, but to point our readers to find the sources that we use in our papers, speeches, or presentations.

There are several types of citation styles, and your major/discipline will often determine which one you use, but your professor will also specify if they want you to use a certain style.

Two of the most common ones are APA (from the American Psychological Association) and MLA (from the Modern Language Association).

Two Basic Components

In-text citations
- this refers to anytime you use information from a source in your paper, oral speech, PowerPoint, etc.
- this includes direct quotes (exact wording), summarizing (condensing large passages) and paraphrases (condensing small passages).
  - Paraphrases are someone else's ideas in your own words, and must still be cited.
End list citations
- this refers to the alphabetized list of sources at the end
- sometimes called References or Works Cited

The in-text citations tell your reader which information comes from another source, and the Reference or Works Cited entries tell exactly which source that is.