Citation Guidelines and Skills for Papers and Exams

Knowing when and how to cite your sources properly is an important skill to know for your courses and to carry forward when you graduate from Rutgers-Camden. Combined with the ability to evaluate such sources, it represents an important component of information literacy, expected of all college graduates today. Since 2004, the department has agreed to make APA citation the standard for its courses.

Why Is Citation Important?

1) To back up your assertions. Otherwise what you say is simply your opinion. Providing sources for what you say allows the reader to understand and evaluate the bases of your assertions. It's important therefore only to cite as authoritative those sources that you have critically evaluated. Links to webpages providing guidelines for evaluating sources may be found at the department's library resources webpage.

2) To give credit to others for their ideas. Otherwise you run the risk of plagiarism--of taking credit for ideas that are not your own. At Rutgers and all universities, this is considered a violation of academic integrity, subject to severe penalties. Proper citation helps you avoid this.

3) To demonstrate to your teachers the work that you have done. While you should not cite for citation's sake, proper citation is a way of showcasing the work you have done to your teachers.

What Should Be Cited?

1) Facts (specific bits of information, e.g. statistics) that have been produced by a specific person or organization. You needn't cite the date of an event or other facts that are broadly known, but you should cite facts such as the most recent poverty rate, an event that is not broadly documented or known, etc.

2) Ideas and Words of others. Using someone's ideas or words without acknowledgment is plagiarism. The department's plagiarism webpage contains links to resources that explain in detail how to avoid plagiarism and how to cite properly.

Citation Is Not Just for Research Papers!

Especially if you use the words or ideas of others, proper citation is required in whatever form of communication you are engaged in: web pages, PowerPoint presentations, posters, etc. All direct quotations must not only be identified by quotation marks but must include the source as well. Otherwise they constitute a form of plagiarism, wherever they occur.

What Is APA Citation?

The style guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA) are widely used throughout the social sciences, although separate style guidelines continue to be supported by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association. APA citation is one of two styles described and illustrated in the Brief Penguin Handbook used in English 102 at Rutgers-Camden. If you own a copy, you will find the section on APA citation a valuable resource.

The APA Style Manual is now in its fifth edition, but is not available online. However, the best way to learn how to use APA citation is to study and adapt examples of it, and the following websites provide both instruction and examples that you can draw on:

APA Citation Guidelines: Works Cited (U. Penn. Library). A no-nonsense approach, providing models for proper citation in your list of references, and also on a separate page, examples of proper in-text citation.

Using APA Format (Purdue University). This useful webpage explains and illustrates proper citation both within the text of a paper and in the reference section at the end. It covers both print and electronic sources, although the coverage of the latter is somewhat limited.

Note: If you access a journal article online in a bibliographic database, you may treat it as a print publication. You need not include the Url in this situation, since what you are accessing it is simply an electronic representation of the print publication. Consult your Professor if you are unsure about this, since citations for electronic sources are an evolving practice.

Generating APA Citations with the Landmark Citation Machine

David Warlick's Landmark Citation Machine is an interactive website that will create APA citations for you when you provide it with the necessary information. It can generate citations for both print and electronic sources. It's a great tool for students writing papers, but it does not substitute for knowledge of when to cite--it is limited to helping you cite your sources properly, both within the text and in the reference list at the end of your paper. Once you have generated your citation, copy and paste the APA citation into your paper. You may have to tweak the spacing and occasionally other details a bit, but overall the Citation Machine works impressively well.