The academic career is full of complicated, detailed and researched based projects. To make sure you have composed an authentic and credible document you need to cite the important ideas, concepts or any statistical data extracted from somebody else’s site or book.
While writing a research document a student carries out a comprehensive analysis of his or her topic, picking up ideas and quotes of professionals and including extracts of surveys. The inclusion of such data and information requires authentication and that is called Referencing or citation. One must add detailed information of every consulted source, within the text (in-text citation) and at the end of the document (reference list).
Which Things to Reference
Things that require exact and proper references include:
- Facts, ideas, figures and other information, which is not a common knowledge
- Publications include, books, web pages, chapters, theses, and articles should include references
- Ideas, theories, and words of sole author
Importance of Referencing
Reached based documents should be reliable and authentic. It must have the right information and the most relevant one. To inform readers about the scope, authenticity, reliability, and depth of the work, citation or reference is performed.
Moreover, when you cite or quote the reference of your sourced information, you can allow readers to pursue the topic further by navigating to the sources and learning about the subject in detail. Some readers have a keen interest to delve deeper into the researched work, it will help them know your subject more through your references.
Referencing portrays that you have written the piece by blending utmost dedication with true efforts. Your document depicts a well-researched content and anybody who will give it a read will appreciate your work. You will be saved from adding wrong or unauthentic information thus making every bit of your argument real and strong.
Furthermore, you will receive credits for the vast research you did in your work. You will be able to put your ideas in the larger intellectual conversation, within the context. It will highlight your efficiency and the level of skills. Hence, a citation is imperative as a student must interpret and analyze sources.
Create Non-Plagiarized Content
One of the major benefits of referencing and citing your sources is that you become able to compose a non-plagiarized document. When you use somebody’s words or ideas and copy without acknowledging them, you end up composing a fully plagiarized document.
It is quite a serious offense; it shows that you have deliberately attempted it to save some time or efforts. This could lead you to face some serious consequences.
Summing Up
Though having utmost importance, citation and referencing are extremely challenging to perform. You have to learn many formats. Each category of source requires a different format and category of citation. However, to ease the struggle you can seek help from citation generators. For example, if you want to cite a source in ASA formats you can use a tool like ASA citation generator. Now without wasting any time, you can have a perfect document created in a blink!
Caitlyn is a research specialist in a content agency. She is an avid traveller, a blogger, a tech-savvy and a social worker. Other than working, she spends most of her time reading sci-fi novels.
