If you’re writing any kind of paper—essay, report, legal document, proposal, etc.—and you reference ideas that are not original to you, you need to be citing your sources. Citing sources gives credit to the people who developed original ideas and research. Citing sources will keep you from plagiarizing and help prevent you from violating intellectual property laws. Most importantly, perhaps, citing your sources is the honest, ethical thing to do when you are using others’ material. As a bonus, though, citing sources also makes you look smart since it rhetorically suggests to the reader that you’re well-read and you know what you’re talking about!
Follow this guide below to be sure that you correctly cited all of your sources using one of the two most common style guides: APA and MLA. If you’re unsure if you should be using APA or MLA, do note that in terms of ethics, it doesn’t really matter. Either style guide will be just fine for citing sources—just be sure to be consistent. But recognize that many fields of study (and many teachers, for that matter) have preferred style guides, so be sure to check which one you should be using. In general, MLA is used for disciplines in the humanities (like art, English, literature, history, and so forth) and APA is used for disciplines in science, social sciences, and business (like biology, communication, psychology, and so forth).
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