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Attributing Sources

  

If as the rhetorician Kenneth Burke postulates, all texts are conversations, then an expectation of academic writers is that we acknowledge—give credit to—the ideas of other researchers and writers.

The following passage, adapted from Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide, outlines three goals academic writers achieve when they accurately document their sources:

  1. It enhances your credibility as a writer. By carefully and accurately citing your external sources in the text and by documenting them at the end of your writing project you show your readers that you are serious about your subject, your research, and the argument which you are making. You demonstrate that you have studied your subject in sufficient depth and read credible and authoritative sources carefully.
  2. It helps you to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s ideas or writing as your own. It is a serious offense that can damage the reputation of a writer forever and lead to very serious consequences if committed in an academic or professional setting. Later on in the chapter, we will discuss plagiarism and ways to avoid it in detail.
  3. The presence of complete citations of sources in your project will help you demonstrate to your readers that you are an active participant in the community of readers, writers, researchers, and learners. It shows that you are aware of the conversations that are going on among writers and researchers in your field and that you are willing to enter those conversations by researching and writing about the subjects that interest you. By providing enough information about the sources you used in your own research and writing, you give other interested readers the opportunity to find out more about your subject and, thus, to enter into a conversation with you.

As a student researcher today you have an amazing amount of credible and relevant source information available to you; however, considering that you’ll most likely be accessing most of it online, documenting where the information comes from—i.e. attributing sources in your writing projects—can be challenging. Because you may be accessing all of the articles you are finding, for example, on your home computer, you might just think they are “web sites,” but that’s not the case. Most likely using online college library resources you accessed each article through one or more research databases and they were published in various journals or magazines. Therefore, whenever you find a promising source “online,” I recommend taking notes and carefully documenting what the source is and how you accessed it. In addition to exporting/saving the sources you find, if the database you are using has a “cite” feature, you should use it and create a document to keep a record of the bibliographic citations for the sources you are finding. Your instructor or college librarian can show you how.

The Basics of Source Attribution

When using any kinds of texts as sources in your writing, it is extremely important to attribute those sources properly. This is called source attribution, and doing it right means you avoid plagiarism. Regardless of the source type, there are three key elements to source attribution:

  1. Signal phrases
  2. In-text citations
  3. Bibliography entries

Maybe you noticed these in the sample summary from Chapter 3 excerpted below:

Marin claims that the word homelessness “is almost meaningless” in its application and divides the homeless into two groups: “those who have had homelessness forced upon them and want nothing more than to escape it; and those who have at least in part chosen it for themselves, and now accept, or in some cases, embrace it” (307).

Marin, Peter. “Helping and Hating the Homeless: The Struggle at the Margins of America.” Writing and Community Action, edited by Thomas Deans, Longman, 2003. pp. 305-18.

  1. Signal phrase: Marin claims
  2. In-text citation: (307)
  3. Bibliography entry: Marin, Peter. “Helping and Hating the Homeless: The Struggle at the Margins of America.” Writing and Community Action, edited by Thomas Deans, Longman, 2003. pp. 305-18.

While the basics of source attribution across academic discourse communities are the same, the mechanics of exactly how to cite vary by style. The following section continues using this Marin source example from above to demonstrate the basics of source attribution in more detail in both MLA and APA format.

Citation Styles

The citations in the Marin example above are all in MLA format, which stands for Modern Language Association. What academic disciplines do you think use MLA? You probably realized that English often requires MLA; many disciplines in the Humanities use MLA as well. Another citation format you will most likely use in college is APA, which stands for American Psychological Association. You probably realized from the name that psychology generally uses APA, as well as the social sciences, and so do a number of professional disciplines like education, business, and many health fields like nursing. In your college career you will probably take a variety of classes and, therefore, benefit from a basic understanding of at least MLA and APA formats. I recommend consulting citation resources available at your college or at the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), which include guides for both MLA and APA. You could also access each organization’s web site directly. What follows are some basic citing comparisons between MLA and APA format.

MLA format:

Marin claims that the word homelessness “is almost meaningless” in its application and divides the homeless into two groups: “those who have had homelessness forced upon them and want nothing more than to escape it; and those who have at least in part chosen it for themselves, and now accept, or in some cases, embrace it” (307).

Marin, Peter. “Helping and Hating the Homeless: The Struggle at the Margins of America.” Writing and Community Action, edited by Thomas Deans, Longman, 2003. pp. 305-18.

APA format:

Marin (2003) claimed that the word homelessness “is almost meaningless” in its application and divides the homeless into two groups: “those who have had homelessness forced upon them and want nothing more than to escape it; and those who have at least in part chosen it for themselves, and now accept, or in some cases, embrace it” (p. 307).

Marin, P. (2003). Helping and Hating the Homeless: The Struggle at the Margins of America. In T. Deans (Ed.), Writing and Community Action (pp. 305-18). New York, NY: Longman

1) The signal phrase, which signals to readers that source information follows, is comprised of the author’s last name and a signal verb. Read a list of signal verbs in Writing 250 – Writing & Rhetoric Advanced Composition. Note in MLA format signal verbs are in the literary present tense, as though the text—the source—is still speaking to us. In APA format signal verbs are in past tense. Also notice that in APA format the year of publication goes in parenthesis after the author’s last name in the signal phrase.

2) The in-text citation contains in parentheses the page of the text where the quote is found. Notice that APA uses “p.” while MLA does not. Also, if for stylistic purposes a signal phrase is not used (for example if the source was already introduced and used earlier in the project), then the author’s last name—and in APA the year—could go in the in-text citation).

3) The bibliography entry appears at the end of the writing project, in a list on its own page. Note a number of differences in MLA and APA format from the examples. In MLA the bibliography page is called “Works Cited” and in APA it’s called “References.”

In both formats there are a number of variations for signal phrases and in-text citations depending on how to most effectively integrate the citing of sources into your writing project—into your sentences. Of course, there are also a number of variations for citing different kinds of sources. For example, this example from Marin is a work in an anthology. What about citing journal articles or a web sites? What if there’s no author or no page number? What about citing primary sources like interviews? Consult the Purdue OWL (mentioned earlier), your college library, or the MLA and APA web sites for examples for any kind of source situation you encounter.

TRY THIS to understand styles and formats. The style guide and citation format an academic discipline follows may offer some insights into what that discourse community values. For example, did you notice that the publication year needs to be included for in-text citations in APA format but not MLA? Why do you think that is—what might APA disciplines like the social sciences value in the publication year of an article as compared to an MLA discipline like English? Why does that make sense given their subjects and methods of study? Also, disciplines that use APA format tend to summarize and paraphrase from secondary sources more, quoting directly less often than MLA disciplines. Why do you think that is—what do they each value, given their subjects and methods of study?

There are actually many more citation formats than MLA and APA, and you may encounter some in your college writing career; furthermore, your instructors may have specific requirements within these formats. Lastly, details within these formats do change, so it’s best not to waste your time memorizing the mechanics of the citation formats. For now, you should focus on understanding the logic of citation and following examples.