Citations

Pre-AP English 2Mr. Jason StephensonDeer Creek High SchoolOctober 2012

Paraphrase

To paraphrase information from a source, put it in your own words. Within your paper, you don’t have to put quotation marks around the information, but you still should use a parenthetical citation.

Original Sentences from Source

“This was the era of Jim Crow—when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot. Even Hopkins, which did treat black patients, segregated them in colored wards, and had colored-only fountains” (Skloot 15).

Paraphrased Sentence

Although Johns Hopkins accepted black patients, the hospital still maintained separate areas and water fountains for their black and white patients (Skloot 15).

Paraphrasing

Notice that the period comes after the parentheses. This source had an author and a page number. Not all sources will be this way. If you don’t know the page number, just include the author’s name.

No author? No page number?

If your article doesn’t have an author or a page number, you can use a portion of the article’s title in the parenthesis. For example, if your article were titled “The Key to Happiness is a Full Head of Hair,” you could put “Key to Happiness” in your parenthetical citation: (“Key to Happiness”)

Cite To cite information verbatim/directly/word-

for-word, enclose the author’s words in quotation marks. If you are using a direct quote, make sure it is powerful and important. You should usually include just part of the sentence, not the whole thing. Also, direct quotations sound awkward if they do not have any context or transitions. Parenthetical citation rules still apply.

Full sentence from source

“The ancient Egyptians preferred rubbing their heads with a mixture of lion, hippopotamus, crocodile, cat, snake, and ibex fat” (Bilger).

Portion of Sentence Cited in Passage

American men who suffer from baldness sometimes apply Rogaine to counteract their thinning patches. This is nothing new. Bald men have been rubbing concoctions on their spots for centuries. Ancient Egyptians used “a mixture of lion, hippopotamus, crocodile, cat, snake, and ibex fat” (Bilger).

Page Numbers

This article from the Gale database did not provide page numbers. Sometimes databases provide an article in PDF form, which is a facsimile of how the article originally appeared in the magazine or journal. A PDF article will almost always have page numbers.

Page Numbers

If your source does not have page numbers listed, do not create them. For example, the above citation appears on the second page of the article when it is printed, but Bilger 2 does not appear in the parentheses, just the author’s last name.

Ellipsis

When citing directly from a source and you want to omit some text from the middle of the quote, use an ellipsis, the three periods (…), to show where you have left words out.

Original Long Passage “This sensation, Bob said, was a result of

the amygdalae and the central nervous system shooting signals of distress up and down to each other. It’s the feeling we get when we’re suddenly startled—like when a figure jumps out at us in the dark—or when we realize we’ve done something terrible, the feeling of fear and guilt and remorse, the physical manifestation of our conscience” (Ronson 109).

Passage with Bolded Words for Citation

“This sensation, Bob said, was a result of the amygdalae and the central nervous system shooting signals of distress up and down to each other. It’s the feeling we get when we’re suddenly startled— like when a figure jumps out at us in the dark—or when we realize we’ve done something terrible, the feeling of fear and guilt and remorse, the physical manifestation of our conscience” (Ronson 109).

Citation with Ellipses

Upon seeing a violent image, most people experience a “sensation…of distress…the feeling we get when we’re suddenly startled,” but psychopaths remain calm (Ronson 109).

Ellipses

Notice that ellipses are not placed at the beginning or the end of the direct quote. It’s obvious that text exists before the quote and will continue afterward. Just use ellipses to indicate where words have been eliminated in the middle of a direct citation.

Brackets

When quoting from a source and you want to slightly change a word so the sentence makes sense, use a [bracket] around the changed text. Bracketed words are usually verbs. You can also add a word to a quotation to clarify a pronoun or any other word, but you must enclose the added word in brackets.

Original Sentence

“They fused HeLa cells with mouse cells and created the first human-animal hybrids—cells that contained equal amounts of DNA from Henrietta and a mouse” (Skloot 141).

Citation with Brackets

Scientists used HeLa cells to develop a cure for polio, but they also “fused [them] with mouse cells and created the first human-animal hybrids” (Skloot 141).

Another Citation with Brackets

Scientist used HeLa cells to develop a cure for polio, but they also “fused [them] with mouse cells [to create] the first human animal hybrids” (Skloot 141).

Brackets

The more brackets you have to place within a direct quotation, the more likely you need to just paraphrase it. A couple brackets are okay, though.

Double Quotation Marks

When citing from a source that already has quotation marks, surround the original quoted word or phrase with single quotation marks(‘ ’).

Original Sentence

“The bald spot at the back of his head—“the lemon,” as he called it—was now covered with a thin crop of naturallooking hair, and his widow’s peak was almost gone” (Bilger).

Citation with Internal Quotation

Amin’s transplant was successful. Eight months after the surgery, “[t]he bald spot at the back of his head—‘the lemon,’ as he called it—was now covered with a thin crop of naturallooking hair” (Bilger).

Original Sentence with Dialogue

“Let me tell you something,” he’d said to me. “Having hair on your head, you feel like you’re still young. You feel like you’re alive. Nobody wants to look old, man. Nobody wants to look old” (Bilger).

Citation of Dialogue Men who can afford the $16,000 Bosley hair

transplant gain a tremendous sense of self confidence. After his procedure, one man said, “Having hair on your head, you feel like you’re still young. You feel like you’re alive” (Bilger).

Notice that when citing the dialogue, you still use quotation marks, not apostrophes.

Signal Phrase

To add variety, you can give credit to the author in a signal phrase, which alerts the reader about author and his or her credentials / authority / credibility. With a signal phrase, you don’t have to use a parenthetical citation for the author’s name, but you should still include the page number if it is available.

Signal Phrase Example Rebecca Skloot, who spent ten years

researching The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, explains that some of the crimes Nazi doctors were convicted of included “sewing siblings together to create Siamese twins” and “dissecting people alive to study organ function” (131).

Notice that Skloot’s name is not included inside the parentheses since her name was already included in the sentence’s signal phrase.

Signal Phrase

Once you have used a signal phrase to introduce a source, just use parenthetical citations for that source from then on.

You don’t have to introduce all your sources with a signal phrase, but you can for some of them.

Present Tense

Notice that when writing about an author, you should use the present tense: “Rebecca Skloot…explains,” not “explained.”

See Downloads page for more verbs for signal phrases.

Citing a Website

Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Website.Publisher Name. Date published. Web. Date

accessed.

Franek, Jacob. “Hair Loss Prevention 101.” Ask Men. IGNEntertainment, Inc. n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.

The information for the above entry was taken from the following website, which is sponsored in part by Rogaine, and, thus, is probably not that credible: http://www.askmen.com/sports/health_400/487_hair-loss-prevention-101.html

Citing a Website

If neither a publisher nor a sponsor name has been provided for your website, use n.p.

Use n.d. when the web page does not provide a publication date.

Can you tell that n.p. stands for no publisher and n.d. stands for no date?