Premise

No, it’s not just advice from old people telling you crazy kids to “get off my lawn!” Citing sources is actually a fundamental aspect of many academic and professional settings and situations. Whether you’re conducting medical research at a prestigious hospital, writing up a technical report for a computer science company, or proposing a new policy as an executive at a hedge fund, audiences often want (and sometimes even need) to know where you’re getting your information from. Enter citations!

As such, it’s vital to clearly identify not just what is external information vs. your interpretation of it, but where audiences can find that source if they want to learn more about a topic, verify the authenticity of the information provided, or are just curious to check it out.

Think of citation as almost like a professional courtesy. You don’t always know everyone who might read or access your work (or why), and as such, citation serves as a uniform format for audiences who seek sourcing for any of the aforementioned reasons. Not to mention the added benefit of making your work (and by extension, yourself as a researcher) look more credible by virtue of showing the background sourcing behind all the work that you’ve done!

Examples

There’s always the very relevant (and often, also, relative) question of what is “general” versus “specific” knowledge.

“General” means that pretty much everyone either, a) knows the fact being included, and or, b) it’s such a broad claim that there’s simply nothing specific enough to find a specific source to corroborate. 

• Example (a): “George Washington was America’s first president.”
  • Explanation: This is such a wide-known claim that it doesn’t warrant needing a citation.
• Example (b): “America is among the most powerful nations on our planet.”
  • Explanation: As a general statement, it’s so broad that there’s no nothing specific enough about the claim itself to cite (although you’ll probably need to back such a bold statement with specific cited evidence later!)

“Specific” on the other hand, means knowledge that is either, a) not commonly known to a general audience, and or, b) simply detailed to the point where it must come from a particular source.

• Example (a): “George Washington’s teeth—despite popular myths—were actually made from ivory, not wood.”
  • Explanation: Now this is something I didn’t know! So how do we know this is in fact true, and not the opposite? If there is a historical record of this fact, then you should be able to cite it! Maybe there’s a letter that George Washington wrote complaining about his “ivory teeth,” or a historian who points this fact out. Either might serve as solid citable evidence.
• Example (b): “America is no doubt among the most powerful nations on our planet, with over ten times the GDP per year as countries like its northern neighbor: Canada.”
  • Explanation: Really? That seems like an awful lot! So if it’s true, how do we know that the numbers claimed here are accurate? That it’s not actually 20 times, or only 2 times? Or that this statistic is from five years ago and isn’t outdated? Or what if we just want to see America’s GDP compared to other countries’? Sounds like a claim worth citing!

As you can see in the latter examples here, there’s lots of reasons to cite, stemming from the questions we might have in terms of the further specifics of these particular claims. As such, the citable claims should have sources included with them!

Note: with different audiences, you may assess the “necessity” for citation quite differently. E.g. if you mention (as per the examples above) that “George Washington was America’s first president” as a statement within an essay written to students in rural Uganda, they might not consider this to be “general” knowledge if they’ve never even heard of the guy. This is why it’s always vital to consider your audience. 

And what if you don’t know your audience? Or if your audience includes Americans and native Ughandans? That’s a great question. Ultimately, it does come down to your discretion between what (based upon the subject matter in conjunction with your target audiences) what might be defined as “general” versus “specialized” knowledge with a balance of all these considerations in mind. Again, this is why it’s so important to at least consider who might be a target audience(s) of your work (whether that work be a written piece, presentation, etc.).

The simple rule: if you’re not sure, just add a citation. 

Let’s take a look at a sample student paragraph from a researched argument paper with zero citations. Note where you feel confused or even just not fully confident as to whether the information in each sentence is from an external source or is the students interpretation, analysis, and or argument:

There are many factors—especially recently—that have led to this decline in job opportunities in the tech industry. These businesses and startups used to be on fire, having a large amount of openings. However, hiring trends have decreased, most notably between 2022 and 2023. Inflation and rising interest rates seem to be the greatest causes, which have discouraged employers from taking on more employees. According to one source, “As of April 7, job postings on the employment website Indeed fell 15% from the same time last year, with the biggest decline in the tech sector. According to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, software development job postings are down 55.4% from the same time last year.” This startling information shows just how much job postings have declined, highlighting an example from the tech industry in which software development job postings are going down a large amount.

Now let’s ask how to cite all this by marking potential areas where citations would be useful to avoid any missing clarity as to where specific information is coming from. We’ll code the sentences in green that seem to be “general” knowledge, statements, or analysis; versus those in red that seem to be “specific” claims that warrant citation:

There are many factors—especially recently—that have led to this decline in job opportunities in the tech industry. These businesses and startups used to be on fire, having a large amount of openings. However, hiring trends have decreased, most notably between 2022 and 2023. Inflation and rising interest rates seem to be the greatest causes, which have discouraged employers from taking on more employees. According to one source, “As of April 7, job postings on the employment website Indeed fell 15% from the same time last year, with the biggest decline in the tech sector. According to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, software development job postings are down 55.4% from the same time last year.” This startling information shows just how much job postings have declined, highlighting an example from the tech industry in which software development job postings are going down a large amount.

Now let’s go through line-by-line and identify why the green lines don’t need citations, and the red ones do:

• “There are many factors—especially recently—that have led to this decline in job opportunities in the tech industry.”
  • This is a general statement: that there are “many factors,” which implies that specific ones will be mentioned, which may themselves warrant citation. But it seems here like this statement is your own claim based upon further research and understanding of the subject matter.
• “These businesses and startups used to be on fire, having a large amount of openings.”
  • While this is a “specific” claim about a “trend” within the industry, it’s still a broad one. If you were to compare or contrast, or give specific numbers, etc., it would probably need to then be cited.
• “However, hiring trends have decreased, most notably between 2022 and 2023.”
  • Obviously, this is a “specific” claim here because of the dates. Okay, so how then do we know that this trend has most notably happened between 2022 and 2023 rather than some other time vector? Cite it!
• “Inflation and rising interest rates seem to be the greatest causes, which have discouraged employers from taking on more employees.”
  • While you’re not citing specific numbers, you are citing specific claims, like “inflation” and “interest rates” being the most responsible for this trend. How do we know other factors aren’t in fact the largest contributing consideration. Cite it!
• “According to one source, ‘As of April 7, job postings on the employment website Indeed fell 15% from the same time last year, with the biggest decline in the tech sector. According to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, software development job postings are down 55.4% from the same time last year.’”
  • This should stand out to you as the most obvious example needing citation, as we’re getting not only a direct quote from a source, but also one with statistical information. We definitely need to know who said or wrote this!
• “This startling information shows just how much job postings have declined, highlighting an example from the tech industry in which software development job postings are going down a large amount.”
  • This is simply analysis of the data and information you’ve provided (and hopefully cited). As such, you don’t need to cite your assessment of the information.

An edited version with proper citations might, therefore, look like this:

There are many factors—especially recently—that have led to this decline in job opportunities in the tech industry. These businesses and startups used to be on fire, having a large amount of openings. However, hiring trends have decreased, most notably between 2022 and 2023 (Banes). Inflation and rising interest rates seem to be the greatest causes, which have discouraged employers from taking on more employees (Banes). According to one source, “As of April 7, job postings on the employment website Indeed fell 15% from the same time last year, with the biggest decline in the tech sector. According to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, software development job postings are down 55.4% from the same time last year” (“More Needed”). This startling information shows just how much job postings have declined, highlighting an example from the tech industry in which software development job postings are going down a large amount.

Note that you may have to use the same citation (Banes) more than once to distinguish if the information is coming from the same source or a new one–or to make sure that we don’t confuse it with your own analysis of the otherwise cited claims around it.

Further Considerations

• If you’re not sure, err on the side of “over-citing.” Unlike with grammar, punctuation, and diction, it’s better to be redundant with citation rather than unclear. So when in doubt, just as a parenthetical citation.
• Remember to follow the set citation style guidelines. Simply put: citation generators, auto-cites, etc. can be a great way to organize material, but in reality, they often don’t do a great job (and rarely ever a consistent one) in correctly citing all given information. As such, the only way to really be sure whether your citations are correct is to read the given citation guidelines in full. You wouldn’t expect to know how to build a bridge by just glancing at a few pages in the instruction manual. Such is the same reality here. Just take a look at the full guidelines for a format like MLA via the Purdue OWL website as an example.
• Look at samples. If you have access to sample documents that feature citation (e.g. sample papers for our class) then read through these to see how your citations should look in their implementation.
• If you’re not sure, ask your instructor. One of the greatest benefits of being in college is that you have instructors who can clarify guidelines, direct you to further resources, and review sources with you. Take advantage of these resource opportunities!