Cite This Page

Did your teacher/professor ask you to “cite” or “reference” your work?  
What does that mean?

In most elementary and middle schools, student research and homework papers focus little on footnotes and references.  In high school and college/university, citing your work becomes mandatory and the norm.

While each of is smart in our own way and we may know a lot about many things, we certainly don’t know everything.  That means that when you write a report on something, you have to look up information about your topic.  When you write an essay or prepare a report, you generally have to do some research to find out information, facts, etc.   Your research may include the use of  books, magazines, journals, websites, newspapers, or you might even have to interview or speak to someone.  Using someone else’s information, data or even an idea, and passing it off as your own by not giving the original author credit, however, is unethical and equivalent to stealing.  Doing so is called “plagiarism”. 

All literary and academic work requires you to identify the source of your information.  This is known as “citing” or “referencing”. There are established formatting rules that dictate how you should reference your materials. 

A proper citation includes two parts: 

A reference within the text of your report.  This is generally indicated by a reference number at the end of a quotation or idea; and, a full listing of all resources used to write your paper at the end of the report called a Bibliography.  

There are various styles of citing and referencing which dictate how to format you paper and Bibliography.   The most common styles are the American Psychological Association or APA style, the Modern Language Association or MLA style or the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). Each have rules regarding how to write a Bibliography entry to include the name of the author, published material, name of book and/or article, and URL for web-based information.  Your teacher will advise you which style is required in your school.  MLA is probably the most common style in use.

While you should become familiar with the rules of the style you use to create your Bibliography, in today's internet world there are also a number of websites which will assist you with preparing your citations.  

While I am not endorsing any website (please see disclaimer at bottom of page), here are a few that my students have had success using:

WorksCited4u - An online tool that creates a free Bibliography in MLA, APA or Chicago Style.  There is an Auto Cite and a Manual Entry Mode.

Citation Machine - An online tool created by The Landmark Project - Choose your style (MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian), choose your resource (book, magazine, newspaper, website, journal, film or other), edit & a Works Cited or Bibliography is created for you.

EasyBib - Another online tool to create your MLA style Bibliography

Do you need to cite a page from the FreeTiiuPix website?

The information you need to create your citation is:

Website Name:   FreeTiiuPix.com
Published Date:  Eg.  2012  (put the most current year that you find in the copyright notice at the bottom of the page.)
Page Title:  will change according to which page you are using.  Should look something like: 
"Boa Constrictor"
Accessed Date:  On which date did you visit the site?
URL:  Cut and paste the URL of the page you are citing.  Should look something like: 
http://freetiiupix.com/Animals.htm
Author Info:  The authors are always Tiiu Roiser and Kevin Chorowiec  (Note:  Some online website don't allow you to add a second author.  You may have to do this manually. The first author has the last name first, while the 2nd author has first name first.)
The name of the article: will depend upon which animal, tree, etc. you are using.
The publisher:  is always FreeTiiuPix.com

If you are using information from the Animal category and writing about Boa Constrictors, your reference would be: 

 

Disclaimer of Endorsement Reference made in this web site to any specific commerical products, processes or services or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors.  It does not constitute endorsement. Links to other Sites This web page contains links to other web sites which are not related to FreeTiiuPix.  The links to web sites not under the control of FreeTiiuPix are provided solely for the convenience of FreeTiiuPix site visitors.  FreeTiiuPix is not responsible for the accuracy, relevance, content, practices, privacy, reliability, terms of use, etc. of any of the information contained in these external web sites.  Please always check the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies of any site you visit. Reciprocal Links -  FreeTiiuPix does not engage in reciprocal linking.  I have added links to outside resources solely as a service to FreeTiiuPix visitors.  I do not endorse nor guarantee in any way these external sites.  Inclusion of any links to sites are not paid advertisements. Webmasters -  If you want a link from these pages to your site removed or changed, please send a note to the webmaster.