A Quick “How-To”

 In-text citations allow you to place textual evidence in your paper that make your assertions STRONGER  We use them to help build our arguments  They help us prove what we’re trying to prove

 We cite!  If they are not our words/ideas, we must give credit to the individual who did.  We need to tell where we got the information (this goes on the Works Cited page), but we also give the page number in our actual paper in the parenthetical.

 Any thing not from your brain needs to be cited  Any words that aren’t your own have to be cited  Any number or statistic or photo/graphic must be immediately cited  Any time you use someone else’s thoughts and don’t cite them you are plagiarizing.

 This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page.  The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses. For example:  According to Elliott George, The Jim Crow Laws “were designed to separate members of racial minorities—specifically African Americans—from mainstream white society” (6).

 This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page.  The author's name may appear in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses. For example:  The Jim Crow Laws “were designed to separate members of racial minorities—specifically African Americans—from mainstream white society” (George 6).

 When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name.  “The term ‘Jim Crow’ typically refers to repressive laws and customs once used to restrict black rights, but the origin of the name itself actually dates back to before the Civil War.” (“Was Jim Crow a Real Person?”).  In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title of the article appears in the parenthetical citation which corresponds to the full name of the article which appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry in the Works Cited. The Works Cited entry appears as follows: "Was Jim Crow a Real Person?" History.com. A&E Television Networks, 29 Jan Web. 13 Oct

 Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).  You do not need to give paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.

Practice! What would you put in the parentheses for these sources? We will do #1 together.

In-text citation would appear as the following: 1. (“Blue Print Lays Out Clear Path”). 2. (Dean). 3. (Gowdy 33). 4. (Shulte). 5. (Uzawa ).

 Once you finish summarizing what an author said, you place a citation in parentheses after that summarization. You do not use quotation marks

 The original passage:  Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.  Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976):  A legitimate paraphrase:  In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).  An acceptable summary:  Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).

 Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources.  You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations or common knowledge.  Remember, this is a rhetorical choice, based on audience. If you're writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, they'll have different expectations of what constitutes common knowledge.

 With your table partner, work on the following worksheet to see if you can cite each source correctly.