Business Communication (BUSI 120): Citations

First, check with your professor to be sure which citation style is required (it's probably in the course syllabus).

Then, you need to know when do you need to cite something? 

Basically, if the idea or thought is not your own original work, you MUST cite it! Citations are used in-text as a parenthetical addition to a sentence, and at the end of the paper as a Reference/Work Cited list. The two main formats are APA and MLA. The Library can provide many resources for creating correct citations on your research.

When you are speaking, and want to reference information you received from a source, you can do so in this way:

"As Johnson stated in her work from 2007...."

"Smith showed in the article from 2015 that ..."

"The 2016 Time article 'Blue Whales' explains...."

Keep track of your sources as you gather information in case you need to track down the sources later when you start writing your paper.

Once you put together a few citations, you'll realize how easy it is.  Whether it's MLA, APA or another citation style, you need the same basic information about each source you use.  Learn to identify those bits of information and follow the guides for instructions on how to organize the information. 

• Author of work (or editor, film director, etc)
• Title of book, film, web site, etc
• Publication city, publisher and date.
• For articles, you need Title of article AND Title, date, volume, issue and page numbers of journal.
• For any online source, you also need to capture the URL and date when you retrieved the information.
• For online journal articles from a database, you need to include the name (not the URL) of the database, eg Academic Search Complete, Lexis/Nexis. 

Many research databases like EbschoHost, Opposing Viewpoints, Gale Virtual Reference Library automatically generate citations for you when you click on a journal or article in an online book within that database.   Look for a "CITE THIS"  button or something similar in each database.  Copy and paste the citation to your tracking document.  Usually you will only have to tweak the formatting - but you should always verify a citation generated from a database with the published MLA and APA guides.