Citations
Citing the information sources you use for research can be confusing. In school, we use a citation style called MLA Format that has lots of rules about punctuation, order, capitalization, and more. It is not easy to memorize all these rules. Luckily, there are some helpful tools you can use to cite your sources!
Since we don't have to remember the rules, the trickiest part of citations is knowing where to find things like the title, author, and publisher to plug into the citation generator. Books usually follow the same pattern so that all of this information can be found on the front and back of the title page. Unfortunately, there are no rules for Web sites, so the information can be anywhere or not there at all! Here are some hints that might help you find what you need to cite a Web site:
Author: If you are using an online news source like The New York Times or CNN, the author will usually be listed near the top or bottom of the article. If your source comes from an organization such as the United Nations, the author might be the organization. Sometimes there is no author listed at all, so then you leave the author blank.
Specific Web page, article, or document title: This is usually found near the top of the page in large or bold type. This title describes what is on this specific page, not the entire Web site. For example, right now you are on a specific Web page called "Citations & Copyright."
Web site name or title: This refers to the entire Web site, not just the specific page. For example, the Web site you are on right now is called "Flora Middle School 638." The Web site name can usually be found at the top of every page of the Web site and is often the name of the organization or company that is responsible for the Web site, such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Institute, or Flickr. This is not the URL.
Publisher or sponsor: It is important to know who the publisher or sponsor is because this can help you determine what the purpose or agenda of the Web site is. This information can usually be found at the very bottom of the page near a ©. If not, see if there is a page on the Web site such as About Us, Copyright, or Terms of Use that might explain who is responsible for the Web site. This is often a company or organization. If it is a person, try to figure out if this person is a trustworthy expert. Remember, anyone can pretend to be anything online!
Publication date: This is when the page you are using was published or updated. For news articles, the date can usually be found near the author's name. For blogs, the date is usually near the blog post's title or at the very end of the post. For most other types of Web sites, look at the very bottom of the page for the ©. The year or date next to the © is the publication date.
URL: Please copy and paste the URL when you cite a Web site so that it is easy to find the source again. You can copy the URL from the browser bar and paste it into your citation generator.