Citing Your Sources   Tags: apa, citation, citing, mla  

This LibGuide is designed to help you to cite your resources when you are writing a paper or completing assignments for your classes.  

There are different styles to cite your resources.  Please ask your instructor which style to use for your assignment and select the tab on the top of the page for the style you need.  

Why do we need to cite the resources we use?

Citing your resources correctly is one of the ways to avoid plagiarism.  

When you cite properly, you also

• give credit where it's due
• direct people for further research

A citation is information about a resource that you have used or consulted.  The resource can be a book or an article from a magazine, journal, newspaper or website.  There are two formats of citations, a bibliography and an in-text citation.  

An in-text citation is used to tell the reader that you have taken information from elsewhere.  It contains information about a source in the text of your paper or assignment. It is enclosed in a bracket and it may include information such as:

• author's last name
• year
• page number

 A Bibliography, Reference List or Works Cited is at the end of your paper and it is a list of resources you have consulted or used.  

Different citation styles use different 'words' to describe a list of resources at the end of your paper.  

In general:  

Bibliography:  Contains all resources- even the ones you only consulted but did not cite.    

Reference List or Work Cited:  Contains resources that you cited in your paper (as in-text citations)

For more information about what to use for your citation style, please refer to the appropriate tab (APA or MLA) for your citation style on the top of this page.  

Here are parts of a citation that you should be aware of:  

• Author
• Publish date
• Title(s)
• Publisher
• Place of publication (for printed books and encyclopedia)
• Retrieve date (for electronic resources)
• Retrieved from (for electronic resources retrieved from a database or website)

Watch one of these short tutorials from CLIP or University of Sydney Library or use their drag and drop game to learn about the parts of a citation.