WR 121 Erwert - education: Citations

Course guide for WR 121 Erwert class on the Southeast Campus

Citations

College essays and presentations require that you provide your reader or viewer a citation with information about the source of the information and images that you use, presented according to the guidelines of a specific citation style.  This page includes information about creating citations for text and images using MLA and APA style, the styles used most often at PCC. 

Cite Your Sources in MLA

Why cite your sources?

When you use someone else's words, ideas, or images in your writing, you need to give them proper credit. Providing a citation or reference enables others to locate these sources, too! Here is a sample MLA works cited page.

Resources for creating MLA-style citations:

Free citation creation tools to help you generate MLA-style citations:

  • MyBib
    • ​Generate citations and bibliographies by pasting a URL or searching for a resource by title
    • Covers MLA 8 & 9
    • Copy and paste citations, download them as a Word doc, save them to Google Drive, print, or email them to yourself
  • NCSU Citation Builder 
    • Simple citation builder for some digital and print materials
    • Covers MLA 8 & 9
    • Copy and paste your generated citation into your bibliography
  • Calvin College's Knight Cite 
    • ​Build citations for a wide range of resources in print, digital, multimedia, and communication
    • Covers MLA 9
    • Create a free Knight Cite account to save citations and export them to Word or RTF document

Need help with hanging indentation?

Cite Your Sources in APA

Why cite your sources?

When you use someone else's words, ideas, or images in your writing, you need to give them proper credit. Providing a citation or reference enables others to locate these sources, too!  View a sample APA paper to see how citations and formatting are done.

Resources for creating APA-style citations

Free citation creation tools to help you generate APA-style citations:

  • MyBib
    • Generate citations and bibliographies by pasting a URL or searching for a resource by title
    • Covers APA 6 & 7
    • Copy and paste citations, download them as a Word doc, save them to Google Drive, print, or email them to yourself
  • NCSU Citation Builder 
    • Simple citation builder for some digital and print materials
    • Covers APA 6 & 7
    • Copy and paste your generated citation into your bibliography
  • Calvin College's Knight Cite 
    • Build citations for a wide range of resources in print, digital, multimedia, and communication
    • Covers APA 7
    • Create a free Knight Cite account to save citations and export them to Word or RTF document

Need help with hanging indentation?

Citing images

When you use images in your presentations or papers, you should provide a citation for these sources, using the same principles as you would for textual information.  Here are some guides for citing images in MLA style:

Here are some guides for citing images in APA style:

Generate citations at the click of a button

The library catalog and some library databases have built-in citation generators, which allow you to simply click on a "Cite" button to get the citation for that article or book in various formats. You can usually find this useful feature, if it is available, on the page for the specific article or book. Always double-check the citations from citation generators, as these automated tools are known to occasionally produce errors (for example, formatting the author's name or title in all capital letters). 

In the EBSCO databases, the "Cite" tool is located in the "Tools" menu, to the right of a full article record:

Screenshot showing the location of the Cite button on the right-hand side in EBSCOHost

 

In our Library Catalog, the "citation" tool is located in the "Send to" area below the title, author, and location information in a full item record:

Citation buttons are also available in ProQuest databases, SIRS, CQ Researcher, Google Scholar, and most Gale Databases. If you're not sure how to find the citation, ask a librarian.