How to Give Credit to a Website When Writing a Paper Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

In general, if one of your professors at limestone tells you that a paper must be written in apa format, the professor is telling you to follow apa's guidelines for formatting papers, using headings, and documenting sources. Documenting sources means giving credit to the person or people whose ideas you are quoting or paraphrasing. Using standard guidelines, like those provided by apa, helps to ensure clear and consistent presentation of your written material and is simply what is expected in academic writing. Both apa and mla are often used for academic writing. while they vary in technique and style, both provide guidelines for format and documentation. In general, you will use apa when you are writing for classes in the social and behavioral sciences criminal justice, psychology, social work  etc. Apa is often also used  in professional studies courses especially education and natural sciences courses. each course is different though.   when in doubt, ask your professor.

Citing sources means that you are giving credit to the sources you used in your paper. you need to cite your sources both in the text of your paper inside the paragraph s where each source is used and at the end of your paper. the citations you create inside of your paper are called in text citations. the list of citations you create at the end of your paper is called a references list. Citing your sources provides your audience with a record of the research you are using in your paper. This lends credibility to your work and gives credit to the person or people who originally came up with the information you are now using to support ideas in your paper. if you do not cite your sources, you are plagiarizing. Yes! you have to give credit to the source, even when you are paraphrasing putting the ideas into your own words. At some point in your blogging career, you may want to quote or link to something you found online.

It is very important that when you use something that you did not write, you provide proper credit. This applies to anything created by another person: writing, pictures, videos, music, anything. Usually, the way you give credit in a blog post is less formal than the way you give credit in an academic paper. But, first, why is this a big deal? isnt information you can access for free available for you to use any way you want? the short answer is, no. copyright law protects created material even though you can access information online for free, that information is still protected by copyright. Copyright law is intended to protect everyone, including you. you cant legally use others material in such a way that makes people think it is your work. Other people cant legally take your work and make people think that it is their work, either.

The library of congress has detailed information on copyright, but they also have simplified information in the form of a cartoon. using others material without giving credit it unfair have you ever worked hard on a project at work only to have your co worker take all the credit so that you were unable to convince the boss that you did most of the work? if you use someone elses words, pictures, or other work without making it clear that he is the one who created it, you are acting like that co worker. Just as you want people to recognize the results of all your hard work, so do others want the credit for what they do. using others work without giving credit is stealing and lying if you use words, pictures, or other work without giving credit to the person who created it, you are stealing and lying.

Fences By August Wilson Essay

You are stealing the recognition they would receive for their creation and lying by presenting the material in such a way that makes your readers think you created the work. The information on the website is free for the public, but the author may be making money from the ads on the site. If you use this authors work on your website and do not provide credit, people have no reason to click on the original authors website.

How do i give credit where credit is due? there are a few ways to give proper credit in a blog post. Following are examples to demonstrate the most common ways of giving credit in a blog post. Lets say you read something on a website and want to write a blog post that answers a question raised there.

Do not copy the entire or large portions of the original article and publish it in your own blog post. Even if you credit the original author, you are not legally allowed to copy the entire post without permission from the original author. Instead, say what you found interesting, include a link to the relevant post, and continue writing your own post. _ recently, i read an article  on already pretty  that talked about dressing down work clothes. I found this article useful because i enjoy wearing pencil skirts and button up shirts, but work in a business casual environment.

Sal makes good suggestions, but the article and comments got me thinking about how i incorporate my personal style into the casual atmosphere at work. Todays blog post is about some things i do to dress down my more formal work wear. This extra link is helpful in case the first link is broken, because readers can still find the article. Also, by naming and linking to the whole website, you are letting people know in advance where you found the article. In some cases, people might want to wait until they are in private to go to a particular website. If you only link to the article, it is harder for them to know what kind of website they are being sent to. This is optional because people will find out who the author is when they read the article, but it is a nice thing to do and enforces your image as a writer who gives proper credit.

include a short quote from the article and include a link sometimes, you may want to include a short quote one or two sentences in order to demonstrate a point. When you do this, make sure that you set apart the other authors work with quote marks. _ alison green from ask a manager says in answer to a question on how to deal with odiferous co workers, and on the boundaries issues, you need to be straightforward there too. Well, i agree, but my problem is that i dont know how to distinguish between being straightforward and being rude. The reason is because here the authors specific words are being quoted and you want your reader to know who is saying these quoted words.

include a longer short quote and set it apart with a block quote on occasion, you may need to include a longer quote. Instead of surrounding this quote with quotation marks, use a block quote format. Block quotes are generally used if the quote is four lines or longer when it appears in your post. use block quotes sparingly. It is much better to publish the one most important thing and then send your readers to the original article for the rest. _ déjà  pseu of une femme dun certain age   managed to combine star trek and fashion: so what does a policy of non interference in alien civilizations have to do with style? not much, except that it was the first and most important rule from which all others flowed. Many of us have our own prime directive when it comes to our conscious and unconscious style rules. Her post  got me to thinking about what my own style prime directive might be and if it gets interpreted to fit the situation as the prime directive is star trek seems to be.

Block quotes should form a block of text with greater left and right margins than the other text in your post. Wordpress has a button with quotation marks on it that automatically formats block quotes. The most important thing is to give credit where credit is due and to make certain that your readers can easily differentiate between what you wrote and what the other person wrote. The first two methods are preferable to using block quotes,  but i wanted you to have an example of the third option in case you should need it.