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Hi there! I'm Studyfin, your tutor. Today we will learn how to give credit to authors when we use their work!
When you write a research paper, you use facts from books and websites. Giving credit to those original creators is called citing your sources. It is a key part of writing ethically and avoiding plagiarism.
To cite a source, you must display key details like the author's name, the title, and the date. Think of a citation as a bridge that connects your reader directly back to the original creator.
Using sources ethically means you do not just copy and paste. You must write the ideas in your own words, or use quotation marks for direct quotes, and always name the creator.
Imagine you are writing a report about space. You find this sentence on a website written by Dr. Sally Ride in 2012: "The stars look incredibly bright from space." Show how to use this fact ethically in your own paper.
- First, decide if you want to use a direct quote or put the idea in your own words.
- Next, write your sentence. If you use her exact words, put quotation marks around them: "The stars look incredibly bright from space."
- Then, add an in-text citation right after the quote. Put the author's last name and the year in parentheses: (Ride, 2012).
- Finally, write the full citation for your bibliography page at the end of your report, so readers can find the website.
