CST 110: Public Speaking Guide (Annandale)

There are several ways to cite your sources but the three we are going to focus on in this class are:  Formal Citations, In-text Citations and Bibliographies.

Formal Citations: Citation styles are taught and required as part of the academic research process. The practical reason for creating formal citations is so that important resources can be found again later. Formal citation style forces the researcher to be thorough. If all that is save about a resource is the Website address (URL), is that enough to know what the page was about? What if a key Web page is moved or taken down? How can it be found again? A formal citation includes the author's name and the publisher. Having this contact information improves a researcher's odds of finding the new location for a missing resource. Publication date information in a citation helps determine whether the resource can be used again or 'retired' in favor of something more current. A formal citation provides credibility and saves time when sharing information with other researchers.

Information from Lora K. Kaisler and Dennis O'Connor at Information Fluency, 2003

In-Text Citations: 

An in-text citation is the brief form of the reference that you include in the body of your work. It gives enough information to uniquely identify the source in your reference list. The brief form usually consists of:

• family name of the author(s), and
• year of publication.

In-text citations will look the same, regardless of whether you're referencing a journal article, a report, or a video.

For more on in-text citations see this Libguide.

Bibliography or Works Cited Page:

What is a bibliography? The term bibliography is the term used for a list of sources (e.g. books, articles, websites) used to write an assignment (e.g. an essay). It usually includes all the sources consulted even if they not directly cited (referred to) in the assignment.  Using the APA 7th Edition Guidelines below will help you create a bibliography with the correct information needed for each type of resource being used.

You will often find options for citing your sources in library databases. 

NOTE: Remember that automatically generated citations are a great place to begin, but may contain errors. Compare citations you find in databases to those in the APA guidelines link at the top of this page.