Writing Skills: Citation

into one of those first two student types, so clearly, you're not alone in

your agony. Research papers don't have to be stomach-churning, though. Leave

that to roller coasters and new, wild flavors of potato chips. Well, when you know how to

properly cite research, the process of researching can be easy as pie. Mmm, delicious

pie... okay, citation. (mumbling)

(mumble-reading) Uh, this kind of

citation? The one you get for going 115 in a 15? Yeah, no, don't do that. Bad

idea. Citation is also about using other people's work in your own research papers.

That's a real thing, and as long as you do it correctly, it's even legal.

It's like someone else came up with the brilliant thoughts and you just get to

use them. Okay, well, sort of like that there are a lot of rules and

restrictions when it comes to citing other people's work. As I said, you can

totally use other people's work when writing your own speeches, research

papers, or even in poetry or other creative writing. The important part

about using others' work though, is making 100% sure that you're citing it.

Well, there are three basic methods of citation: quoting, paraphrasing, and/or

creating your very own argument. Well, quoting is the most basic but probably

also the one people screw up the most often when you quote a source that means

not only are you using exactly what's being said in the source itself but

you're citing or attributing it correctly well pretend you're going to

write a paper about gorillas you know that they're pretty awesome creatures

but you don't know exactly where on earth they live so you need a source to

help fill in this information gap you head to the library or hop online

whatever and find a great resource from national gorilla quarterly that tells

you everything you've ever wanted to know about

gorillas and even a little bit more in the TMI zone okay anyway this source

gives you the perfect quote that would just really make your research paper pop

and you'll want to use it all right well what do you do well you use it with the

correct citation pretend this was the entire passage that you found if you're

going too far in trying to jungle in La Canada Grill Lisbon spawn in Uganda

Rwanda traveling across your path all right

you don't need all of that info it's too much and strays off course from the main

point you're talking about where the gorillas can be found so you'd pull only

this sentence from the passage right here eastern lowland gorillas I'm

spawning again of a wild mountain gorillas in the nation and you'd work it

into what you've personally written in your research paper you don't want to

just throw random quotes into your papers to a little amateur mistake

instead work to frame the quotes you pull from other sources like so there

are two main kinds of really eastern lowland gorillas found in their borders

into nations and then see the unquote there yeah see what I did there I set up

the quote with a sentence that frames it within the context of the paper that way

my writing and the quote I picked I'll just you know flow together now in order

to make sure you've correctly cited the information you've got to use quotation

marks around the info you stick into your papers this rule is a must

no questions asked if you don't follow it you could be violating copyright laws

and might be accused of plagiarism ie stealing someone else's work and

attempting to pass it off as your own it's pretty much the cardinal sin of

paper writing if you plagiarize even part of a paper and get caught there are

serious consequences like you might fail the class be kicked out of school you

could even be sued for copyright infringement or using copyrighted work

without citing it but it's really easy to avoid all of this scary stress and

frustration just cite your sources that's literally it you're pretty much

free to use whatever you want copyright it or not as long as you give the author

their due credit come on I mean wouldn't we want others to do the same for you if

you wrote a really awesome book and someone decided to steal parts of it and

claim that they were the one who wrote it only you'd probably be pretty P owed

and with good reason it's why

copyright laws exist and why we make sure to cite our resources in our papers

alright last step in the quoting process is to cite the source where you've got

the info going back to our gorilla example let's say you found a quote you

used in an article written by Sally schmooper on page 97 of national gorilla

quarterly you're going to need to include what's called an in-text

citation it's called an in-text citation because it's included in the text of the

paper itself now sometimes you'll have to do in-text citations and a complete

list of all of your references at the end of the paper but that's another

topic for another day back to Sally and the gorillas using the example from

above here's how we write our in-text citation for Sally schmooper there are

two main types of gorillas that may be found in a quote in tournaments and

integrated on a board and you know quote schmooper 97 say we did that notice the

parenthetical citation comes after the quotation marks since it wasn't part of

the actual quote then the period comes at the end of the sentences periods tend

to do and we're done that's it another way of using sources in your paper is

called era phrasing unlike quoting which is just taking someone else's work

plopping it into yours and throwing quotation marks around the whole shebang

paraphrasing is a little different when you paraphrase someone else's work you

rewrite it in your own words but keep the meaning the same as the original

imagine you're writing a love poem about the object of your desire your bay when

you've been dreaming about all your teenage life well you know your writing

skills are taught not but you want to up the ante by throwing in a reference by

some seasoned love expert well you find this amazing quote there is no remedy

for love but to love more the Rove 44 hey that runs that's just back it all

right well you're swooning you want to paraphrase this so you'll rewrite it I

know you were going through a rough breakup but you can get over it by

loving again the row 44 yet now okay well your attempt might not sound quite

as eloquent as the original but it works as a paraphrase because you kept the

meaning intact and even though you switched it up and

puts quote in your own words you've still got to give credit to Thoreau he

came up with the s and after all it might sound tricky to know

when to paraphrase something when in doubt cite it if you have any inkling

that you might be copying someone else's work and not giving them credit just

cite it you know like Nike the third method of citation is creating your own

argument you'll use this method when you write argumentative essays in particular

to present a counterpoint to the point you're trying to make well let's say

you're arguing that school lunches should always include pizza no matter

what no arguments there right well not so fast in order to construct a

compelling argument you've got to consider what the opposition has to say

in this case the opposition says despite rumors of pizzas its own food group is

50 no true tomato sauce is not because of those people who know did you dip

harsh but a decent argument in your paper you're going to create your own

argument using this info like so pizzas not only delicious but it's good for you

according to pizza haters and unmanned Tomatoes Oh blah I all this may be true

there's no law requiring both have nutritional value but it doesn't hurt

your help all right well see what happened there

we framed the quote by using our own information about it before the quote we

mentioned the author's name which is totally legit but we can't leave out the

page where we got the info so it goes after the quote there are tons of

specifics when it comes to citations and if you can't remember them all well

don't sweat it there are references upon references upon references for you to

use to get all the rules down there are different citation styles depending on

what discipline you're writing you for liberal arts and humanities courses like

this one we use something called MLA style MLA stands for Modern Language

Association the reason for using any sort of citation style at all is because

it provides a format for writing papers all papers written in the format will be

consistent and easy for the reader to understand which is important in the

world of academics where people are reading and writing papers all the time

well seriously is there anything else almost it's good to get up close and

personal with the MLA format and it's the one you'll primarily use to write

your papers in English and language arts courses okay now in a nutshell that's it

the basics of citation the most important thing to take away from this

video is that citation is not only important it's necessary

if you want to write credible papers stay in school and you know generally

stay out of jail