Citation & Style Guides
Stephanie Ojeda Ponce
What is Citation?
Citing means to make a reference. It means to write or talk about words or ideas from something or somebody else. In writing, citing can mean referencing the ideas or words of others, and the way you document or provide information about the item. In education settings, writing is expected to ethically acknowledge any references to the ideas, data, or words of others.
A Citation style is a method for citing and documenting sources. A citation style is a book-length set of format and citation rules created by discipline experts. For example, APA style refers to the style guide created by the American Psychological Association. APA believes that APA style is needed because “Uniformity and consistency enable readers to (a) focus on the ideas being presented rather than formatting and (b) scan works quickly for key points, findings, and sources.” The Modern Language Associate (MLA) and Council of Science Editors (CSE) are some of the other organizations that also create widely-adopted style guides.
In their book, Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research, Aaron Tucker and Paul Chafe of Ryerson University they explain that:
Citations are an important part of the scholarly conversation. The order of the bibliographic elements is prescribed by the citation style, which is a convention for the sequence of information and punctuation used. People write for different purposes and different audiences. Citation styles reflect these differences by specifying:
- How to structure the elements (such as date and title) within a citation and
- All of the details that should be included in the bibliography, which goes at the end of your essay
Citation styles force researchers to standardize the content and format of their citations and references. When the title and date are always found in the same place in every citation, research is a bit easier because the information is presented in a consistent way. Whether you are citing print books or YouTube videos, this protocol of scholarly conversation is an efficient way to discuss and share sources.
When is Citation Needed?
Any time you talk about somebody else’s words, ideas, images, or information there should be some type of citation. If you are just mentioning ideas or work, you can just mention the source of the information as part of your sentence. For many citations, saying the information about the source as part of your sentences is enough.
Academic writing, writing for school settings, requires each source be cited in two places:
- In-text citation: Briefly references an item on the source list in parentheses within the writing. The information in the parenthesis will normally include the author’s last name or the name of the source.
- End-of-Text citation: A reference list with complete information about each of the sources. The name of the reference list varies depending on the style guide used and might be called Works Cited, References, or Bibliography.
How is Academic Citation Done?
The way you do this citation depends on the style of citation required for the assignment or research project. As I mentioned before, citation styles are hundreds of pages of rules and examples for EXACTLY how to type up the document including citation, title emphasis, punctuation, page margins, and much more.
Citation Ethics
When credit for the work of another is left out, that can be seen as plagiarism, a type of copying. By many in academia, this is viewed as cheating or a form of theft.
Institutions, like colleges and universities, have policies describing their ethics about the use and citation of sources. There are often consequences for not following the expected code of ethics. I work at Highline College and their Academic Integrity Policy states that: “Academic Dishonesty is when someone consciously, or unconsciously, makes a choice to cheat, plagiarize, fabricate or falsify information, work with others when not permitted, and/or other academic misconduct such as sharing answers to an exam.”
Academic institutions have a complicated history with plagiarism accusations and consequences. Each teacher determines how strict they’ll be on individual assignments and within the course – though they have to follow the college policy. Each college decides what their policy will be – and both teachers and colleges define a set of consequences for violating the rules. Of course, bias plays a significant role in who is suspected, accused of, and found guilty of cheating.
Plagiarism Tea
Plagiarism and incomplete citation are regarded as wrong or even unethical in most academic institutions and organizations. However, there are many instances of people violating those norms. For example, the Inside Higher Ed article “College Apologizes for Plagiarized Antiracist Statement,” describes the apology issued by the dean of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania in which he apologizes for an act of plagiarism at the college.
“Academic writing isn’t a breezy process that makes for easy reading – especially in college, where the rules often come down to a professor’s style preference (MLA v Chicago v AP v APA). It’s no wonder so many fall into the plagiarism trap of their own making. And while Gay more than anyone should have known better, it seems unfair that she should be the one to take the fall when her errors were missed by the institutions that published her – not least the Harvard PhD committee that awarded her the Toppan prize for the best political science dissertation in 1998.” – Andrew Lawrence
Colleges as a whole, and the people studying and working as members, are all subjected to unevenly applied rules about plagiarism. Though Harvard University very publicly pressured their former president Claudine Gay to resign, they didn’t even look into possibilities of plagiarism for others. In my opinion, the public scandal about Gay’s uncited source use was fault-finding as a tactic to get her to resign. This is a tactic that has been experienced by many people that are whistle-blowers, labor activists, or otherwise just disliked by their supervisors and employers. Even if there was truth in this case, it’s also true that there wasn’t a plagiarism audit conducted on others.
I hope this information helps you understand how citation is viewed at colleges. It’s a complex concept that, especially for people that work for academic institutions even if they are student-workers, can help people think critically about citation expectations. These expectations are political because they are not transparently stated, consistently applied, or fairly evaluated.
Plagiarism can be pretty easy to detect. It’s as simple as comparing two pieces of writing and noticing if they are the same. Because teachers tend to do a lot of reading on class topics, when a student is copying something they found online it can trigger a sense of “this sounds familiar” or “this sounds like a professor wrote it,” in the teacher. Many colleges use software which compares a piece of student writing to other submissions and stuff from the internet.
As easy as it is to find plagiarism, it’s easy to avoid. All you have to do is say when you are using somebody else’s words or ideas. Say who you are referencing. Some situations do require citation to be according to a certain style. If you get it wrong, a citation mistake has happened but it’s not nearly as bad as not citing at all.
References
Lawrence, Andrew. “Harvard’s Claudine Gay was ousted for ‘plagiarism’. How serious was it really?” The Guardian. 6 Jan 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism
Tucker, Aaron and Paul Chafe. Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research. Ryerson University.
Utah State University Libraries. [USU Libraries]. (2021, March 8). Citing MMU Scholars. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF8S4Qr_-FM&t=151s
