HOW TO DO CITATIONS
HOW TO DO CITATIONS
The purpose of a citation in a paper is so that someone reading the paper can look at the same version of the material that you did when you wrote the paper. So for example if a reader wants to find the quotes you used, they know that when you say the quote comes on page 3, they should look at page 3 of the same edition of the book that you cite.
The first thing to know is that there are 3 citation styles: MLA, APA, and Chicago. So if you want to know how to do something in one of these styles, you can simply google “how to cite a book in MLA style” or “how to cite a journal article in APA style”. There are plenty of websites that have this information, but you need to know what the thing you are citing is, so you know what to google. So for our class:
Most of the work we are reading are journal articles or chapters from books scanned. The information you need for citation is on the first pages of most of these readings. Please be aware of the differences between citing journal articles (which do not include the publisher) and citing books (which do include the publisher). Also note that if you only read one chapter of a book, you should cite that chapter individually, not the entire book.
Remember you want to refer to the text itself, not to the place I put it for class!
If you do not quote or closely paraphrase then you don’t need any in text citations or footnotes you only need a page at the end that lists the works cited.
If you do quote (or use a close paraphrase) you need to give the page number of the quote/paraphrase. This can be in text, in parentheses at the end of the sentence, or it can be in a footnote.
If you use in text citations for quotes you should not repeat information that the reader already knows, so if you say the name of the author in the sentence you don’t need to repeat it in the parentheses.
In text citations should go before the punctuation at the end of the sentence. For example: Descartes said “I think therefore I am” (43). ß not the real page number, just an example.
Unless you are citing multiple works by the same author, you do not need to include the year in your in text citation.
