This guide uses words that may be unfamiliar to you. When you see a word in bold, check out the glossary to see the definition.

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Whenever you borrow from another author's work, you need to give that author credit. This act of crediting is called "citing" or "citation." Borrowing can mean a lot of things, and sometimes it's hard to know whether or not you need to include a citation in your paper. Generally speaking, whenever you quote, paraphrase or summarize from another author's work, you should include a citation.

Engaging with other people's ideas is essential to academic research and writing. By citing sources properly, you're telling your audience (and your professor) that you've read and understood what experts have to say on a given topic. This guide will help you understand the basics of why, when and how to cite.

By Mahrya Carncross, WIU Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.