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How to Learn How to Cite

Learning how to cite is an important part of learning to write a research paper or report. When you research a topic, you will use a list of sources, such as books, magazine articles and journal articles. When you reference a piece of information you found in one of your sources as evidence in your paper, you will need to cite it. This gives credit to the original source and prevents you from inadvertently plagiarizing on your paper.

Instructions

    • 1

      Keep track of where your information comes from. Whenever you add a new piece of information, a fact, an expert opinion or a quote to your paper outline or final draft, make a note of which source it came from, along with the page number.

    • 2

      Create your bibliography page. Your bibliography page is a necessary part of writing a research paper and will make citing your sources easier. How you cite each source will depend on the style you are using, such as Modern Language Association (MLA) or American Psychological Association (APA) style. A style book in your school library or a university website can give specific information on citing books, articles and websites. For example, when creating a bibliography entry for a book in APA style, the format will look like this: Author last name, author first name. (publication date). Underlined title. Publisher's location: Name of publisher.

    • 3

      Go through your paper and add in-text citations whenever you use information from one of your sources. The information could be a fact, paraphrased content or a direct quote. How you cite will again depend on the style. For example, when adding an in-text citation for a book in APA style, you include the author and year of publication. For MLA style, you include the author and page number where the information was found.

    • 4

      Review your bibliography page and in-text citations as compared to a few other courses on the specific style you are using, such as a citation manual or a university website. This will help you find mistakes in your citations and correct them. Correcting your own mistakes is an important part of learning how to cite sources in a paper.

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