Knowing when a citation is needed

Sources don’t always have to be formal academic articles or books. One of the trickiest aspects of citing your sources and documenting your work is recognizing what should be cited, regardless of the type of composition you are crafting.

You should generally cite a source in these cases:

If you do not, you risk committing plagiarism, a serious academic offense.

Typically, you do not need to document a source in these cases:

Related topics:

Understanding why documenting sources is important

Integrating sources in a multimodal composition

Documenting sources in a multimodal composition

Citing sources and avoiding plagiarism in MLA, APA, Chicago styles