Welcome!
Welcome to the Citation Toolkit!
Select a citation style from the tabs above or read on to learn more about citations and their importance.
Why Are Citations Important?
Citing your sources means that you are correctly documenting where ideas and information that you've found in your research comes from. Creating proper citations is important so that your professor and readers can find the original source that you used information from. Not properly citing outside resources is called plagiarism. Plagiarism is easily avoided by citing your sources correctly and completely.
Citations have two parts:
In-Text Citation - provides brief information about the source in the text of your paper
References (also called Bibliography or Works Cited) - the list of sources which provides full bibliographic information
Failing to properly cite your sources means that you are plagiarizing, which is, "an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward" (What is Plagiarism).
You can learn more about why citations are important in the Library Classroom.
Source: https://www.plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism
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Common Knowledge
Information that is considered "common knowledge" does not have to have a citation. However, what is common knowledge is dependent upon your geographical location, your audience's prior knowledge, your field, culture, and more.