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Arkansas State University

An Introduction to Citations and Research: When and Why We Cite

Kristi Murray Costello
Associate Chair of Writing Studies and General Education, Old Dominion University

You have likely heard a collective groan anytime the professor at the front of the room explains that the paper she’s just assigned needs to be in a specific style, such as APA (American Psychological Association), AP (Associated Press), CMS (Chicago Manual of Style), MLA (Modern Language Association), or Turabian, but universities require students to cite sources for several reasons:

To give credit to others for their ideas;
To provide information to readers so they can find the sources themselves;
To lend credibility to the author’s claims;
To distance themselves from someone else’s ideas.

While it is a good practice to give credit to anyone whose words or ideas you share, it is especially important in institutions of higher learning because faculty and students are held accountable for their work. In higher education, one’s writing and research can help them obtain publication, tenure, grants, and prestige. However, more importantly, when shared with others, one’s ideas, writing, methods, and research can lead to new and improved ideas, writing, methods, and research. This process of sharing and building on one another’s ideas has led to life-changing scientific advancements, new perspectives on canonical texts, policy reforms, and social and political movements. In Kenneth Burke’s The Philosophy of Literary Form, he describes this process as an ongoing conversation. He writes:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. (110-111)

Thus, if you think about knowledge and the generation of knowledge as unending conversation, it becomes clear that everyone who had a voice in the conversation deserves to be heard and know they were heard. Even when we’re refuting their ideas, research, or methods, they still deserve credit for being a part of the conversation because it may have been their finding or mistake that led to the next improvement or advancement. It is also equally important to interrogate the conversation, asking yourself whose voices have been left out and why.

In sum, any time you bring someone else’s ideas or work into your writing, you should cite the source. The only time you need not cite is when the information is common knowledge. For example, you would not need to cite that Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States of America, but you would want to cite that President Jefferson gave more than 6,000 of his own books to replenish the Library of Congress after arson perpetrated by British soldiers depleted the library’s holdings (“10 things you didn’t know about Thomas Jefferson”). When in doubt as to whether information should be cited, cite it. It is always better to over-cite than under-cite. To see essays formatted according to each style guide, please see the examples provided for you later in the book.

WRITE about an instance in which someone was accused of plagiarism. It can be your own experience or that of a friend, politician, or celebrity. What do you recall about the story? Was it plagiarism? How did people react? What impact did the allegation have on the accused?

Works Cited

“10 things you didn’t know about Thomas Jefferson.” The Washington Post, 30 June 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-thomas-jefferson/2011/04/12/AGGLlWsH_story.html?utm_term=.03d87ec3f8a9#comments. Accessed 6 Feb. 2017.

Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. University of California Press, 1941.