Professional and Technical Writing/Documenting Your Sources/Basic Guidelines for Citing Resources

Basic Guidelines For Citing Resources

Sources are cited in the body of the text as well as at the end of the document. The APA and MLA styles differ in how to format these citations.

• In-text citations must clearly show what information the citation is referring to, which is why they must be put in parenthesis and written inside the period.

Example: On November 8, 2009, the world's largest cookie was made (Smith, 2009).

•To clearly show that a citation is for multiple sentences, it should be put at the end of the first sentence (inside the period). This clearly introduces the citation at the same time the information is introduced.

Example: The topic of cookies and their origins has been studied by John Smith (2009). Cookies are thought to have come from... They were originally used for...

•Citations at the end of a writing should be well organized, and follow all the rules of the citation style. For example, APA style requires citations to be in alphabetical order.

•If information is not available for a complete citation, just skip the part of the citation that you can't find, filling in all areas of information that are available. You should try your hardest to find all information, however, to make your writing most credible.

Example: Author's name is missing and there is not an organization name mentioned, write citation as follows: “The Preparation of Bacterial and Oral Smears, and the Use of Simple Stains.” Microbiology Laboratory. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc, 2003. 21-30.