Mastering In-Text Citations: A Guide for Ethical and Accurate Research Writing (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: When you write a research assignment, it's important that you acknowledge the ideas or quotes from other sources that you use, right when you use them. Not only does this show that you're an honest and ethical student, but it also tells the reader exactly where you found that awesome piece of information. So, how do you give credit to other sources in your assignments? You use in-text citations, which can also be called parenthetical citations. An in-text citation connects information you're borrowing from a source to a citation in your bibliography, which helps teachers and classmates understand where the information originally came from. Include an in-text citation in your paper when you use a quote word-for-word from a source or when you borrow an idea or phrase from someone else. In-text citations have to be written in a special way. They require four things in this order. An open parenthesis, the author's last name, the page number that you found the information on, and a closed parenthesis. In-text citations are placed inside the sentence, so make sure that the period is outside of the parenthesis. If you are using a source word-for-word in your paper, you need to put quotation marks around it. This is called a direct quote. Let's say that I found a sentence on page 20 of The Giver by Lois Lowry that explains an important part of the story. If I take all or even just part of the sentence word-for-word and put it in my paper, I would need to include quotations around it and add an in-text citation, like this. Let's say you want to explain something that happened in The Giver, but you explain it in your own words instead of taking it straight out of the book. This is called a paraphrase, and while you don't need to include quotation marks, you still need to include an in-text citation. This will give credit to Lois Lowry's writing and let your teacher or classmates know where the event happened in the book. Remember, make sure that the first word in the in-text citation matches the first word in the citation of your bibliography. That way, when people want to learn more about the source in your paper, all they have to do is look for the same word in the bibliography to find it. The in-text citation takes readers to a specific citation in your bibliography, and the specific citation tells the readers where they can find the piece of information you used. There are special rules and exceptions for using in-text citations, so if you're unsure, check with your librarian or teacher, just in case. A great site for practicing the rules of in-text citations is NoWriteInc.com. Check out a practice exercise now by going to this link.