Citations are a way of giving credit when certain material in your work came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again. Citations are important because they provide an important roadmap to your research process and add strength and authority to your work. Whenever you use sources such as books, journals or websites in your research, you must give credit to the original author by citing the source. Citations are also a great way to leave a trail intended to help others who may want to explore the conversation or use the sources in their own work. In short, citations (1) give credit, (2) add strength and authority to your work, (3) place your work in a specific context, and (4) leave a trail for other scholars.

A citation must include a set of parentheses. Without a set of parentheses, one does not have a proper in-text citation and can risk being charged with plagiarism. In-text citations usually appear as parenthetical notes (sometimes called parenthetical documentation) and are inserted into the text of the paper at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Direct quotations should be surrounded by quotation marks and are generally used when the idea you want to capture is best expressed by the source.

Citing sources is important to avoid plagiarism and to give credit to the source authors. It also helps your audience/reader find out more about your research/arguments/ideas/topic, strengthens your work by providing outside support to your ideas, and keeps you from failing a paper, a course or being sued in the real world.

Different subject disciplines call for citation information to be written in very specific order, capitalization, and punctuation. There are therefore many different style formats, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, and more.