Citation Guide

There are a few concepts that help explain the importance of citation in assignments:

Scholarship as conversation

When you do research on a topic, you are engaging with others' research and ideas through articles, lectures, interviews, etc. Often that research and those ideas are also built on the work of others who are engaged in creating new knowledge in this field of study. By citing your sources, you are providing the thread that connect various participants in, and contributing to, a broader continually evolving conversation.

Information has value

It is important to give credit to others' for their ideas.  Intellectual property has both legal and social elements that are defined by the context in which it is used. In the context of higher education in North America, others' information is valued and should be properly attributed as a principle of academic honesty.

You get your research assignment from your professor and they require that you cite your sources. Maybe they want you to use APA or MLA, or some

• Direct Quotations: When you use the author’s exact words
• Paraphrasing: When you summarize someone else’s words or ideas
• Facts: When you mention something that is not common knowledge
• Images: When you use pictures, charts, and graphics that someone else created in a presentation 

Your instructor should specify which citation style to use for written assignments, presentations, etc. The following table outlines citation style preferences by field of study: