The Role of Citations: A Key Element in Producing Plagiarism-Free Essays

Citations – the only solution to avoid plagiarism accusations in your essays. In theory, the concept is pretty simple. You take the help of someone else’s ideas – you give them credit. Yet, plagiarism still boggles the minds of thousands of students. For some reason, these students can’t seem to figure out how to refer to another writer’s work properly. They believe that avoiding this situation is the best option. But in reality, things are completely different.

If you don’t refer to other works or authors, you can’t really situate your work in the current literature. Why is your work important? How does it add to the existing knowledge? Such questions remain unanswered when you don’t use references. That’s why you’ll notice every plagiarism-free writer on MyAssignmenthelp referring to other works. Another crucial detail to take note of is the list of citations provided by the expert, both within the text and at the end of the essay.

Importance of Citations in Academic Writing

So, you’ve finally found an excellent book that has a lot of information regarding the topic that you have to write an essay on. You get inspired by some ideas and decide to incorporate them into your paper. Now, regardless of whether you quote from the source directly or hire a professional essay edit service to paraphrase the content, you have to cite the source.

Citing sources in academic writing isn’t only about escaping the jaws of plagiarism accusations. Giving credit to every writer or source that you have consulted also proves that you –

• Possess excellent knowledge in the field that you have explored
• Have conducted detailed research to come to your conclusion
• Are aware of the various research already conducted on the topic

So, you can’t write off the importance of citations easily. In fact, the only way you can confidently avoid accusations of plagiarism is by citing every source that you consult during the process of writing your paper – and this isn’t only about academic sources. If you even decide to refer to a meme from any social media website, you have to redirect the reader to the source. That’s how strict you have to be about citations.

Now, students often wonder, “When should I cite something?” The answer is pretty simple. There might arise three situations during the academic writing process:

Situation 1: You quote something directly in your essay.

Situation 2: You paraphrase an idea in your essay.

Situation 3: You summarize the information from a source in your essay.

Can you guess which one of these situations requires you to cite the source?

All of them.

You have to cite sources for all three of the situations mentioned above. You’ll rarely find a situation where you don’t have to cite anything. Perhaps the only exception is things related to common knowledge. If you state, “The Sun revolves on its axis,” you don’t have to bother trying to find a written source from Galileo to cite. Everyone knows this information. So, it’s already a part of common knowledge and doesn’t require additional citations.

How to Cite Your Sources in Essays?

If you want to refer to another author’s works or ideas in your essay, you have to figure out which referencing format to follow. Your professors will probably mention this detail along with the assignment guidelines. But just to keep you informed, the most common referencing styles for essays are the APA and the MLA format. Other than these, you also have the Chicago, the IEEE, the Harvard, and several other options. But in this blog, you’ll just cover the most important details of the MLA and the APA styles.

I. The APA Citation Style: Basic Details

The APA follows the author-date style, where you include the author’s surname and the publication year of the work that you’re referencing in the text itself. There are two ways you can do this –

Parenthesis citation: This is where you include the author’s surname and the publication year in parenthesis.

For example: The reports (Heard, 2003) left several open-ended questions that have yet to be answered.

Narrative citation: This is where you interweave the author’s names within the sentence and just include the publication year in parenthesis.

For example: The research conducted by Hudson & Lewis (2009) was a phenomenal inclusion to the literature.

You can check out the official APA guideline for citing various types of sources, including the following –

• Books
• Newspaper articles
• Journals
• Magazine articles
• Brochures
• Conference proceedings

If you feel overwhelmed by the various rules, it’s always best to refer to the guidelines diligently.

II. The MLA Citation Style: Basic Details

There’s a major difference that separates the MLA style from the APA one. Care to guess what it is? Well, the MLA style does not include the publication date in the in-text citations. Instead, it adds the page number. So, if a person is curious about checking out the original work for further clarification, they can find out the source details from the reference list and pinpoint the exact section they’re looking for from the page number.

Parenthesis citation: Include the author’s surname and the page number within parenthesis.

For example: The witch trials were nothing but “a dark history of human beings and their fears” (Benjamin 212).

Narrative citation: Include the author’s name in the text itself so that you can add only the page number in parentheses.

For example: Benjamin explores how fear can lead human beings to something as controversial as the witch trials (212).

Once you’ve finished your essay, add the details of all the sources that you have included as in-text citations in the reference list. After all, readers can’t really check out the source from just the author’s name and a page number or a publication year. They need more details, and this is where the reference list comes into play. Double-check whether you have included all the citation details or not – otherwise, you’ll just be inviting plagiarism accusations on yourself.

In conclusion,

The journey to writing plagiarism-free essays is quite simple – keep track of sources and mention their details. That’s all you have to do. It doesn’t matter if your source is a famous book or a post from Tumblr of all places. You have to cite everything. As long as you follow the proper citation styles and remember to mention all your sources properly, you’re good to go!