Avoiding the consequences of plagiarism is a really good reason to cite your sources. But there are bigger-picture reasons, too, that are based on how using and citing sources will strengthen your learning.
Knowledge Needs to be Shared
If you do not already have a lot of experience with writing essays that require you to cite sources then you may not have developed the habit of asking yourself questions like How do I know that? or Who else agrees with me? when you are making your point. But those are questions that can guide your decision about when to find outside information so that you are not only relying on your existing knowledge when you write college essays.
Everytime you bring in information from outside sources, it’s like you’re bringing the authors into a conversation. The information that you paraphrase or quote from them is their contribution to the discussion. Although personal reflection is important, only focusing your attention on what you already think can lead to a dead-end. Taking part in discussions among a group of interesting experts (i.e., the authors of your sources) can lead you to new insights that you would not have arrived at on your own.
Practice Something Difficult and Get Stronger
As we mentioned above, doing academic work can be difficult just like lifting weights should be difficult or else the work will not change you and make you stronger. So the fact that learning from sources is hard work is a good reason to do it. It’s easier to just write from what we already know, but the work that it takes to understand another writer’s ideas so well that you can explain them and connect them to your own ideas and others’ ideas is worth the effort. It’s also something that gets easier with practice. So the work you put into it now will pay off as you take more classes and write longer and longer assignments. You can become so strong that you start to do research and write articles even when there is no assignment to do. You may find that you become a scholar who continues to develop a research interest after your classes are done.
Source Citations are Like Addresses
One question a lot of students have is, “Why do citations have to follow specific formats?” It can often seem like if you just provide a title or a link then that should be enough for your reader to know what source you used. But since that’s not always enough information to lead them to the source, professional organizations like the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) have come up with long lists of rules about exactly what information should be in your citations and in what order.
It can be helpful to compare citations to mailing addresses to understand how important it is to be complete and accurate in your citations. Just as a letter may not reach you if your name is misspelled or the P.O. Box is left off, it can be impossible to understand a source citation if the volume number isn’t in the right place or if the correct title isn’t italicized, because those details have a lot of meaning. A volume number in the wrong place or the wrong format in a citation may end up looking like a page number, which would be confusing for someone trying to find the exact place where an article was published. A book title that isn’t italicized may be mistaken for a chapter or article title, which would make it hard to search for the right source. So following the rules for citations is important even if the reason for each rule is not immediately obvious.
Note: We mention italicizing words because that is the common way to format titles when you are typing them. If you are writing a title by hand, then you can underline the title and it will mean the same thing to your reader. Underlining the title will bring it to your reader’s attention that you are mentioning the title of a book, journal, movie, etc. Remember that the titles of the shorter parts within the longer works, like a chapter in a book or an article in a journal are not underlined or italicized; they are in quotation marks. You will see examples of this in the citations provided throughout this workshop.