Quick Help: Careful use of sources

• Maintain an accurate and thorough working bibliography.

• Establish a consistent note-taking system, listing sources and print page numbers and clearly identifying all quotations, paraphrases, summaries, statistics, visuals, and media files.

• Identify all quotations with quotation marks—both in your notes and in your project.

• Be sure your paraphrases and summaries use your own words and sentence structures.

• For formal academic writing, provide a citation or note for each quotation, paraphrase, summary, arguable assertion or opinion, statistic, and visual from a source, including an online source. Follow the documentation style your audience expects (learn more about MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles). For less formal writing, linking to a source or some other kind of acknowledgment may be enough.

• Prepare an accurate and complete list of sources cited according to the required documentation style: MLA, APA, Chicago, or CSE.

• Plan ahead on writing assignments so that you can avoid the temptation to take shortcuts.