What is a Citation?
Whenever you get information from a source, quote a source, or base your ideas/statements on another's person work or ideas, you must cite that source. Any idea that is not your own requires a citation.
A citation is when you document the source of an idea or a piece of information that you are referencing, paraphrasing, quoting or using in some way.
A citation should allow your reader to find the original source that you used.
Most citations will include the same basic type of information: author, title, date, website URL, etc.
The type of information needed for your citation, and the arrangement of that information in your citation will depend on the Citation Style that your professor asks you to use. There are many different citation styles!
Remember, it is not enough to mention a source in a bibliography; you must cite an outside source within your text in a specific way in order for the use not to be considered plagiarism. Your style guide (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.) will describe precisely how to cite your sources. If you are not sure which style guide to use, ask your professor.
Creative Commons License
This guide is adapted from the Plagiarism Tutorial created by the University of Southern Mississippi. This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License.