ENGL 254-Advanced Composition / Couch

Reasons to Cite Your Sources

• Give credit to the creators of the works that helped inform and build your paper
• Provide standard details and locations of your sources to make it easy to find them
  • You wrote a great paper and your readers want to find out more
  • So your instructor can easily check your sources
• Avoid violating the  MCCC Procedure 3.10(a) Academic Dishonesty Procedures
  • The Examples of Academic Dishonesty section states "Plagiarism can be defined as, but not limited to, the following: 1. The use of sources created by an individual, group, institution or any other source without proper attribution. Credit must be given to the creator using any formal writing format that outlines sourcing."

See Chapter 4 of MLA Handbook, 9th Ed. (required for this or a previous course) for more on the process of documenting your sources.

Steps in the Citation Process

• Search for information, facts, ideas, quotes for your assignment
• Find a source or work, such as an article or ebook, for that information, etc.    
• Keep enough details about the source to identify and find it again
• Follow a standard, such as MLA Style,  for what pieces of information to use and for the format of the description of the source. Most databases provide a way to easily get a citation. BUT you must check and edit!
• Keep track of what you use from that particular source and where in the source (page number, section, etc.) it was found
• Keep a list of the sources you use. MLA calls this a Works Cited list

MLA Handbook, 9th Ed., has more details on this process (Chapters 4 and 5). MLA is one of the most common standards for citation style.

Citation Help in A-Z Database Listings

A-Z Databases page has a Help, Tutorials, and More ... option beneath many database descriptions that may contain help or videos on how to cite sources from that database.

Example with Help option closed:

Example with Help option open/active: