When the nice officer leans in the window of your vehicle, you hope you won’t get a citation. But when your instructor requires you to give a citation, it’s another thing altogether.
When you see the little TM or C in a circle, that’s a way of acknowledging that term or name has been trademarked or copyrighted, and by doing that, you show that you recognize that legal right of the owner(s). In the same way, you are expected to show a proper citation in footnotes and bibliographies when you write, to acknowledge the use of someone else’s work when directly quoting it, with or without quote marks.
While you might not always need to do this in other circumstances, you can save yourself a lot of legal grief in the future by being sure you handle quotes and citations correctly in your course assignments now. Without a proper acknowledgment for the use of somebody else’s work, you can leave yourself and your employer open to both criminal charges and civil lawsuits, if it even appears that you are trying to claim their work for your own original writing. That’s plagiarism, even if it was only avoiding the extra chore of a citation, and it’s something you should be sure to avoid in coursework and in your job.
The Library has style manuals available in the catalog for the specific style that your instructor requires. Some instructors want you to use APA (American Psychological Association) style in citations, while others might prefer MLA (Modern Language Association) style, or something else. Whatever the style, you can find style books by searching the catalog by Subject for “style manuals”. This will give you a number of manuals for various styles. The one your instructor assigned should be there. Some of these are also available in Reference (2nd floor) or in the Reserve Room (1st floor) so they’re always likely to be in the building.
If you’re not on campus, however, you still have a handy alternative online. The Library has a web page called Citation Style for Research Papers which has links to online resources to help you find the right style.
With these resources, you can find out how to create a proper citation for whatever your article, book, web site, etc., may be, in the style your instructor prefers. These are available to any one, any time.
Currently registered students may also use RefWorks, but that’s a subject for another post.
