Citing Sources

This page contains some basic resources to help get you started citing sources in each of your projects. This page SHOULD NOT be included in your ePortfolio--it is merely for your instructional benefit. The information here is largely drawn from the Purdue Online Writing Lab website.

Whenever we include words, ideas, images, sound files, and/or videos from other people, groups, or organizations, we need to credit the creators and hosts (or distributors) of those items. We do this through citation.

How to cite differs depending on the style with which one is working, but there are two elements that are common across styles: in-text citations and end-text citations. In-text citations give readers an immediate signal that particular words, images, etc. come from another source. They are short and direct the reader to the end of the text for more information on the source. End-text citations provide more detailed information on creators, where the item was found, and so forth.

It is important that you understand how to do some basic citation so that you can avoid accidentally plagiarizing someone else's work. For this reason, this page contains examples of images, videos, and web page citations (the three types of citations you will be most likely to use in this course), along with a Works Cited section at the bottom of the page. For any web page or academic paper where you are citing, you should include a Works Cited section. The "Works Cited" convention and the in-text citation conventions below are all formatted according to the Modern Language Association style.

Citing Images

Little Accents by Vasily Kandinsky

Here is an example of an in-text image citation. This image is Little Accents by the artist Vasily Kandinsky. As you can see, the caption indicates the title of the image and the creator.

If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will find the Works Cited entry beginning with "Kandinsky." Some notes:

Works Cited citations of images begin with the creator's last name, first name followed by a period;
next is the title of the work in italics followed by a period;
then, include the original date of creation (if you can find it) followed by a period;
after that, list the museum or other organization that houses the work followed by a comma and the city where the organization resides followed by a period;
if you retrieved this image from the Web, you will then list the name of the website (in italics) followed by a comma and the web address with a period at the end of it. Finally, write “Accessed” followed by the date you visited that website.

Citing Videos

Here is an example of an in-text YouTube citation. The video is titled Sam Maher - New York Handpan 01. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will find the Works Cited entry beginning with " Maher, Sam" (the name of the creator of the video).

Pay close attention to the different elements in the end-text citation.

Sam Maher - New York Handpan 01 by BUSKRS

Citing Web Pages

When you cite websites, you are usually only interested in particular pages on those sites. For example, if you are going to site a major online newspaper like the New York Times, you are probably going to referencing particular pages rather than the site as a whole. For this reason we will only address how to site web pages (but there are rules/procedures for citing whole websites too).

In online writing, in-text citations are simplified because we can hyperlink directly to the source (see the Purdue OWL example above). If you are citing web pages in a printed text, however, you will use the first bit of information in the Works Cited citation to create the in-text citation. In other words, if you are able to find an author for the web page, you will include the author's last name in parentheses within the text (you will not include any page numbers because it is a web page). If you are unable to find an author for that page, however, you will include the title of the page in quotation marks.

For example, imagine that the web page you are looking at has no author, but has the title "Citing Sources" (like this web page does!). Your text and citation would look like this:

The English 101 ePortfolio site has a number of interesting features, especially the page where you learn how to cite some common sources ("Citing Sources").

This citation tells your reader that when they turn to your Works Cited section, they will find a source that begins with "Citing Sources" in its citation.

A Few Additional Notes

In a conventional paper, your Works Cited section will appear on the final page, and each line after the first will have a hanging indentation. The main body of the paper will also have particular formatting requirements. We will not cover these in our course since we are writing for web publication, but you can find more formatting information @ the MLA Style Center.

In the Works Cited section, entries are listed in alphabetical order based on the first word that appears in the entry (usually the author's last name or the first main word in a title).

If you are providing a direct text quotation, make sure that quotation has quotation marks around it to show your readers what is quoted. If you are paraphrasing (putting another's words and/or ideas in your own words), you do not need quotation marks, but you should include an in-text citation to show that particular ideas or information comes from a particular source.

Sample Works Cited Section

“Citing Souces.” English 101 Wix Site, https://apacton.wixsite.com/english101/citingsources. Accessed 12 Apr. 2019.

“Formatting a Research Paper.” The MLA Style Center: Writing Resources from the Modern Language Association. The Modern Language Association, https://style.mla.org/formatting-papers. Accessed 25 Mar. 2019.

Kandinsky, Vasily. Little Accents. 1940. Guggenheim Collection Online. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/1988. Accessed 22 Mar. 2019.

Maher, Sam. Sam Maher - New York Handpan 01. YouTube, uploaded by BUSKRS, 31 Oct. 2015, https://youtu.be/6oremFnbgO0. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.  

The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl. Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.