Citations given in the paragraphs of your paper are called in-text citations. An in-text citation is the author’s name and date of publication; this information is coordinated with the References list at the end of the paper. Because the list is alphabetized by author, it is easy to find the complete information for any source cited in the paper.If there is nospecific author, the source is listed by the responsible body who published it (professional organization, government agency, etc.)
Every sentence which uses information from sources needs a citation—every sentence! In other words, readers should always know the source of information as they read. Even if the whole paragraph has information from the same source, you need more than just have a single citation at the end. Citations are expected on the first sentence where information is used, on subsequent sentences, and at the last place where the source is used. Clearly this can get repetitive, so a writer needs to add variety where possible.

A paraphrase is usually about the same length as the original passage. Like quotes, a writer should give the page number where the paraphrased information is from whenever possible, although this is less strictly expected than with quotes.

A summary is generally much shorter than the original, giving just the main idea or message of a larger text. Since it seeks to convey the basic information from a page up to the whole document, page numbers are not required in this case.



Last modified: Thursday, 4 November 2010, 4:08 PM