Hi there! If you clicked on this video, you might have some questions about using citations in your writing and speaking. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of information on this topic, but we’re going to break it down to the basics so you can feel confident and get started. 

As you watch this video, keep in mind that you will never have to memorize these rules completely. There will always be resources for you, like this video and books and websites that can help you make sure you’re properly and ethically citing your sources.

So, what even is a citation? A citation is simply a reference to a source. It’s a communicator’s way of letting their audience know where a piece of information came from. 

Without knowing it, you probably reference sources every day. Whether you’re saying “I read in a New York Times article that…” or “I saw a TikTok from Vogue that said…,” you’re referring to a source!

Why do we do this? Well, there are a few reasons.  First, referring to reliable sources to back up our own knowledge and arguments makes us more credible and makes what we’re saying even stronger.  Second, if you have an idea that someone else borrows, you’d likely want credit for your creativity, right? It’s the same thing with research. Put simply, it’s ethical to attribute ideas to the people who came up with them. Third, it’s how we avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious offense in college and the workforce, so it’s important to know how to responsibly use sources. The US has a lot of rules around intellectual property, and using someone else’s ideas without proper credit can be a real issue.

There are two forms of citations that you’ll need to use when working with research: in-text citations and reference lists, which can also be known as works cited or bibliographies.

In-text citations are exactly what they sound like–in the text! These citations are placed after every idea that you learned from an outside source in your writing. Whether you quoted something directly or paraphrased it, an in-text citation is crucial. 

Your reference list, works cited, or bibliography is an alphabetical list at the very end of your paper of all the sources you used in your writing. The main thing to remember here is that your reader should be able to easily connect each in-text citation to a corresponding entry in your reference list.

You might have heard about different styles of citations, like APA, MLA, or Chicago Manual of Style. What do all of these mean? And how do you choose which to follow? Well, these styles are all created by specific organizations that set the standard for citation. In college, some professors will have a preference and let you know which style you should use. If they don’t have a preference, you can usually choose which one works best for you.

Let’s start with APA. APA stands for the American Psychological Association. It’s the style most often used for business and science writing.

If you choose APA style, you’ll need three pieces of information for the in-text citations: the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number of the information you’re referencing if applicable. If there is no author listed on your source, use the name of the article or page. If you’re working with a web page that doesn’t tell you the year of publication or an online article that doesn’t have pages, that’s okay. Just use the information that you can find.

The basic format for in-text citations is author comma date comma page number, all inside parentheses. (Author, Date, P. #). Then, my corresponding reference list entry would look like this: Author’s Last Name comma First Initial period and (Year of Publication)inside parentheses followed by a period. Then Title of Work. period Publisher. period You might be working with online sources, journal articles, videos, photos, and other media, for which you’ll need other information. We’ll talk about where you can find that information in a bit.

MLA is similar to APA, but comes from the Modern Language Association and is often used in humanities writing. 

For MLA in-text citations, you also need the author’s last name and the page number, but not the year of publication. Again, use the information that you can find. So if you don’t know the author’s name or there is no page number, that’s okay.

The in-text citation for MLA looks like this: (Author Pg. #) in parentheses. You’ll notice that APA has commas between each piece of information in the parentheses but MLA doesn’t. Then, the basic format for a works cited entry looks like this: Author’s Last Name comma First Name. period Title of work. period Title of container, which is normally the publication, comma Publisher, comma Publication Date, comma Location which can be things like (pages, paragraphs URL or DOI). The information needed for both APA and MLA is similar, but the order it’s written in is different.

There are a few options when it comes to Chicago style: Author-Date and Notes-Bibliography. The Author-Date style is very similar to APA. It uses parentheses in the text with the author’s last name and the year of publication. 

The Notes-Bibliography style, however, is a little different. This is when you’ll see footnotes in the text and a bibliography at the end. Footnotes are at the bottom of each page and are signaled by superscript numbers after every idea that was borrowed from a source, whether it was directly quoted or paraphrased. The footnote contains a version of the bibliography entry that looks like this: It begins with the number that corresponds with the superscript in the text. First name Last name,comma Title of Work (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication) in parentheses,comma page number. Then, the very last page of the paper has the bibliography, which is very similar to an MLA works cited: Last name comma, First name period. Title of Work. period Place of publication: colon Publisher,comma Year of publication. period

We’ve gone over the basic formats for APA, MLA, and Chicago styles. Keep in mind that you’ll likely encounter sources that require slightly different versions of these, like multimedia sources with different types of creators, sources with multiple authors, sources with organizations as authors, etc. But don’t worry! You have resources at your fingertips to help you determine what format is best for each source.

We have style manuals and guides at the Writing & Speaking Studio, as well as tutors who are trained to help you navigate these resources and write accurate citations. You can also find videos on how to cite specific types of sources on the FIT Library YouTube page.

Before you get started with your citations, let’s take a look at some common questions we hear.

First, do I need to cite ideas that I’ve put into my own words? 

The answer here is a solid yes. Any idea that isn’t common knowledge that you learned from somewhere else needs to be cited, regardless of whether you copied it word for word and put it in quotation marks or you put it in your own words.

Second, what if I am mixing my own ideas in with information from my sources? This is when it’s okay to put an in-text citation in the middle of a sentence instead of at the end. The citation should be directly after the idea that you’ve borrowed. Additionally, you can use attribution language, like “According to…,” that lets your reader know when something isn’t your original idea.

Third, should I use one citation for an entire paragraph if all the information comes from the same place? This is a really common question… 

…and the answer is probably not. Here’s the thing: even if all the information comes from one source, you want to make sure your reader knows that the ideas are not yours, and sometimes it can be unclear without citations or attribution language. Let me explain.

Attribution language works with citations. It consists of words and phrases that signal to readers that a piece of information is from an outside source within the sentence. This could look like, “According to Anna Wintour for Vogue,...” or “In his memoir Fashion Climbing, Bill Cunningham writes…” 

When you use the author’s name in the sentence itself, you don’t need to include it in parentheses; only the year or page number needs to be in parentheses depending on which style you’re using. Attribution language not only allows you to cite within your sentences, it helps make your writing even more interesting to read by involving the author in the conversation. 

Attribution is particularly important when it comes to public speaking. Since your audience can’t see your notes or script, incorporating them into the presentation itself will ensure you accurately and ethically credit your sources. 

To show you an example of mixing citations and attribution language, I wrote an overview of an article I read in Women’s Wear Daily with APA citations and attributions throughout the paragraph.

Arthur Zackiewicz for WWD (2022) reports that unnecessary waste is heading to landfills because of overflowing consumer recycling bins, according to a study released by DS Smith, a manufacturer of sustainable packaging. The study found that many consumers end up throwing recyclable materials in their regular garbage bins when they run out of space in their designated recycling bins. Zackiewicz explains that although the US has been better about recycling in recent years than ever before–recycling about 32% of its waste–we are still behind many other countries: for example, South Korea recycles 65% of its waste, and Slovenia recycles as much as 72%. Zackiewicz asserts that the results of DS Smith’s study suggest that the “welling of waste” is partially due to the growth of online shopping during covid-19, which created more waste for consumers to dispose of and will probably continue to increase as people continue to shop online. 

Notice how only the first mention of the article has a parenthetical citation. The rest of the sentences refer to the study Zackiewicz cited, specifically name Zackiewicz, or refer to him by pronoun, all of which effectively attributes the information to him. Plus, this language places the author at the forefront of the conversation, which is a great tool for clearly communicating evidence-based ideas to your readers.

So let’s recap. Citations are an important part of research writing in college and beyond, and there are a lot of ways to incorporate them. There are three main styles of citations: APA, MLA, and Chicago, and there are plenty of websites and books that have all the information you need to use sources properly and ethically. 

The main thing to keep in mind is that doing your best is the best you can do.  You can always make an appointment with the Writing & Speaking Studio to talk about any of this and make sure you’re feeling confident in your source-based writing. Go to fit.mywconline.com to make an appointment and email writing_speaking@fitnyc.edu with any questions. 

Thanks for watching, and we hope to see you soon!

We spend a lot of time talking about how to cite things we’ve learned from different sources in our essays and written assignments, but what about oral presentations? When we’re speaking to an audience, how do we effectively and ethically let them know when information or language is borrowed from someone else? 

If we’re using a visual aid like slides, we need to incorporate in-text citations for any information borrowed from external sources, whether we’ve quoted them directly or paraphrased an idea. The options are similar to how you would do this in an essay. In fact, you can check out some examples of how to do this on our student resource site!

But what about the things we actually say to our audience? And what if we don’t have a visual aid? 

This is when we want to make sure we use attribution language. 

Attribution language is phrasing that attributes – or credits – a specific idea to an author or publication. 

Sometimes you’ll see phrases like “According to X,...” or “X asserts that…,” and so on. Using language like this tells our audience that the idea we’re about to share is not our own.

For paraphrased ideas – that is, ideas that we’ve put into our own words – we can go right into the idea. 

But if we are quoting something directly, it’s likely because the language itself is important for the audience to know. Since our listeners won’t always see the quotation marks that designate this, we want to use the words “quote” and “end quote” to signify the beginning and end of someone else’s phrasing.

Lastly, similarly to incorporating a source into your writing, depending on who your audience is, you might need to contextualize your sources by noting who the author is and why their ideas are relevant. 

Okay - let’s look at an example. Let’s say we’re giving a speech about fashion at the 2023 Women’s World Cup. 

Here’s an excerpt of what we might say…

The fashion at the 2023 Women’s World Cup made headlines, prompting the rise of new fashion icons and trends. Irene Kim for Vogue asserts that wearing items like team jerseys, sneakers, and knee-high socks are the new rules for - quote - “channeling your inner Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, or Sophia Smith” - end quote. Further, clothing brands are jumping on the bandwagon and partnering with the US Women’s National Team and FIFA to create bespoke collections. 

According to Rose Minatuglio for Elle Magazine, Nike x Martine Rose created items specifically for the US Women’s National Team to wear. These items embodied the team’s spirit with unique, tailored, and genderless garments. Other labels like Mejuri and Stoney Clover Lane are collaborating with the US Women’s National Team, and Nike, Adidas, and soccer.com are selling official World Cup products, as described in POPSUGAR by Kyley Warren. 

These are just a few of the many ways you can incorporate source materials into your speaking. As long as you are making the origins of your research clear to your audience, you’re doing great.

Happy citing!