In-text Documentation

Each time you quote or paraphrase an idea from your research material, you must give credit to the original source to lend authority to your paper and to allow the reader to check statistics or find additional information on the topic.  To attempt to pass off another's words or ideas as your own constitutes plagiarism and is considered one of the most serious forms of cheating.  Credit for each idea that you borrow will be designated by in-text documentation.  Particularly should you cite quotations, statistics, illustrations, figures, diagrams, definitions, controversial or unusual information, and interpretations of critics that you have put in your own words.  However, common knowledge, such as dates, names of places, or generally known information, does not have to be cited unless the material is directly quoted.

Citations come immediately after the borrowed material generally before sentence punctuation.  They consist of the following elements: author's last name, understood form of the title, and page number.  If the author and the title are mentioned clearly in the text, only the page number is needed.  If only one work by an author is cited in the text, the title is omitted.

Punctuation for citations follows these forms:

Colons
separate volume and  page (3:42)
Commas
separate author's name and title (Sandburg, Harvest Poems)
show separation of pages or lines (22,23)
Hyphens
show continuous pagination (98-100)
Periods
separate drama acts, scenes, and lines (2.1.22-24)
separate chapters and verses in Bible (Gen. 2.2)
separate volume and issue numbers in scholarly journals (9.3)

Citations should come before sentence punctuation except when a block quotation is used.  Follow the link for examples of in-text documentation.

 


Back to Step7 home
Introduction
Body
Conclusion