The Excelsior OWL is designed to provide support for writers as they begin the process of writing for college and as they transition to writing outside of their introductory writing classes or programs.
You need to cite your sources, using both an in-text citation and a reference list citation every time you:
When you quote from a source, you copy a short excerpt from the original author's work directly into your paper, word for word. This excerpt is then surrounded in quotation marks and an in-text citation is included. You must also add a citation to your reference list. You might consider using a quote when the author's original words are very effective as written or when the information cannot be easily paraphrased.
You paraphrase when you take what an author has said and put it in your own words. You might choose to paraphrase if the direct quote is too long or would break up the flow of your own prose.
Summarizing is similar to paraphrasing. When you summarize, you not only put an author's idea into your own words, but you only include the author's main points. Summarizing is typically used to condense an author's long passage into a single sentence or short passage. Even you though you are using your own creative process to write the summary, you still need to include a citation.
You don't need to cite when a source is considered...
For simple, uncontested facts, you don't need a citation. It can sometimes be hard to tell whether something is common knowledge, so when in doubt cite, cite, cite!