How would you feel if you went to the doctor with back pain that left you unable to function? After running a few tests, the doctor breaks the news to you: back surgery is needed in order to repair a ruptured disc.

The problem with this diagnosis? It’s completely wrong.

A handful of visits to a chiropractor would align your spine. No surgery needed.

Why were you misdiagnosed? Because your doctor plagiarized much of his work, including his dissertation. He faked his way through med school and ended up forging some of his licenses. Thus, he knows very little about medicine. His patients pay the price.

Sure, this is an extreme example, but it happens. People (like this guy) have been caught practicing medicine illegally, and still others (like this guy) have been caught performing surgeries as fake doctors.

I know–you’re saying that practicing medicine illegally and even plagiarizing in med school is a heckuva lot more serious than plagiarizing your argumentative essay in English class.

Yes and no. Your chosen career may never put someone’s life at risk. But if you plagiarize, your degree is just as fake as the fake doctor who forged his medical license.

Convinced of the seriousness of plagiarism? Here’s what you should know about avoiding plagiarism in your writing.

Q&A: What You Should Know About Avoiding Plagiarism

Q: What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is taking someone else’s words or ideas and trying to pass them off as your own. In the simplest of terms, plagiarism is stealing.

In the simplest of terms, plagiarism is stealing.
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I’m sure you know that using someone else’s paper and submitting it as your own is plagiarism. But you can also plagiarize by doing any one of the following:

• Omitting quotation marks around direct quotes.
• Forgetting to include proper citation for paraphrases, summaries, or quotes.
• Changing only a few words of a quote and writing a paraphrase that is too close to the original statement.

Remember, it’s not only the written word that can be plagiarized. You also can’t use ideas from media–such as artwork, music, or video–without providing proper attribution.

Q: Why do students resort to intentional plagiarism?

Some students plagiarize simply because they don’t want to do the work. Others plagiarize because they run out of time to write an essay.

Still others turn to plagiarism because they don’t understand the assignment. They’re struggling and likely staring at a blank page and end up plagiarizing because they know they need to turn in something.

To avoid a situation where you’re out of time or so confused that you don’t have time to ask for help, start your assignment early.

If you don’t procrastinate, you’ll have time to take good notes when researching, prewrite, draft, and revise. You’ll also have time to get help from your prof, the writing center, or a Kibin editor if you need it.

Q: What if I accidentally plagiarize?

Accidental plagiarism occurs when you incorrectly cite a source. For instance, you may, for the most part, be citing correctly, but you might miss an in-text citation for one of your sources (but include it on the Works Cited or References page).

If you’re in a first-year college composition class and just learning about citations, your prof is probably going to be pretty forgiving. Sure, you might lose a few points for the error. It’s doubtful, however, that you’d fail the paper or be kicked out of college for plagiarizing.

On the other hand, if you’re writing a PhD dissertation or submitting a paper for publication and forget a citation, people won’t be so forgiving.

Q: Can I be thrown in jail for plagiarism?

If you’re caught plagiarizing, you might fail the paper, fail the course, or even get kicked out of college. You won’t be thrown in jail.

Outside of the classroom, plagiarism could mean the loss of your job or a ruined career. And although it’s highly unlikely that you’d be criminally charged for plagiarism, it is possible.

Q: If I intentionally plagiarize, how will my prof even know?

Let’s say your prof is reading a first-year student’s college essay about parenting styles and reads the following sentence:

Studies showed the reciprocal nature of parents’ and children’s emotion dysregulation and how it escalated during experimental play sessions.

Most first-year college students don’t write this way. Your prof knows this.

What if your prof reads a sentence like this?

The available evidence suggests that there is a clear link between parenting styles and children’s capacities for emotion regulation.

This sentence sounds a bit more realistic and could possibly be written by a first-year college student.

However, keep in mind that your professors read lots of papers. They know whether this type of writing looks like your writing and can spot clear changes in wording and sentence structure.

Probably one of the easiest ways for students to plagiarize is to do a Google search and then plagiarize one of the sources that appears in the list of search results.

Ironically enough, probably one of the easiest ways that profs can determine whether a student has plagiarized is by completing a similar Google search.

If a sentence looks suspicious (as in the examples above), pasting the suspicious wording into the search box will reveal whether the information is plagiarized.

In the case of the sentences above, they are taken from the article Harsh Parenting in Relation to Child Emotion Regulation and Aggression.

Of course, if profs aren’t relying on their own detective skills to catch plagiarism, they might also require you to turn in your sources with your research paper. They might even have you submit your paper to a plagiarism checker website.

Q: How do I actually avoid plagiarism?

The easiest way to avoid plagiarism is to make sure that you’re citing correctly. Not sure whether the information is common knowledge (and therefore doesn’t need to be cited)? Play it safe and cite anyway. It’s better to cite than plagiarize.

If you want a little more help with citation and avoiding plagiarism, read How to Avoid Plagiarism in Your Essay Writing.

Interested in practicing citation and getting a little more help actually avoiding plagiarism? Try reviewing one (or more) of these example essays about plagiarism to see whether students have cited correctly.

Worried That You’re Plagiarizing?

Have a completed essay where you’ve reworked citations a million times but are still worried about whether you’ve cited everything and done so correctly?

Here are a few quick tips to help you with avoiding plagiarism:

• Read through your paper again. Mark everything you learned from your research. If you learned it from a source, it needs to be cited.
• All direct quotes must be enclosed in quotation marks and contain appropriate citations.
• Cite all paraphrases, summaries, and quotes.
• Citation requires both an in-text citation and a corresponding References page (if you’re citing in APA format) or Works Cited (if you’re citing in MLA format).

Still worried? Send your paper to an editor at Kibin. While we don’t check for plagiarism — after all, you know how to avoid that! — we can make sure your citations and references are polished to perfection.

We like neatness. Tidiness. Orderliness.

And consistent formatting. Mmm.

So when your teacher asks you to use APA essay format for your paper and you have only the vaguest idea of what that means, you definitely want one of us in your camp.

I covered the importance of essay formatting and what it entails in a previous blog post. So go check it out if you haven’t already. I’ll wait here.

You good?

Cool.

In this post, we’re going to drill down into the specifics of APA formatting and how to ensure your essay looks just right.

What Is APA Essay Format?

“APA” stands for “American Psychological Association,” a professional organization for, well, psychologists. However, the organization’s official style guide, which is called the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, is used by students and professionals in a number of disciplines.

If your teachers ask you to use APA essay format, then they simply mean to use the formatting guidelines laid out in this manual. The manual tells you how to handle everything from the width of your essay’s margins to the citations for your sources.

Chances are, your library has a copy of the full Publication Manual for your perusal, which can be really handy when you have a very specific question.

But if you just want to quickly learn the basics and turn in a tidy, well-formatted essay, keep reading!

What Are the Most Important Elements of APA Essay Format?

General page setup

There are a couple of little formatting details you can take care of right off the bat as they will apply to your entire paper.

First, be sure you set your margins to 1 inch all the way around your document.

Secondly, be sure to choose a font that is clear and readable. The APA recommends 12-pt Times New Roman, but you could also go wild and use Helvetica, Georgia, Arial, or Calibri.

Last but not least, the entire document—from the cover page to the reference list—should be double-spaced with paragraphs indented 1/2 an inch.

Running head and page numbers

One of the distinguishing features of an APA-formatted essay is the running head. This is a short version of your title—fewer than 50 characters—that appears in the header of your document, justified with the left margin.

On the first page of your essay, usually the cover page, the running head is preceded by the words “Running head” followed by a colon. On subsequent pages, though, the running head is just the title.

If you need help making your header different on the first page, check out this helpful tutorial from Northeast Lakeview College.

Pro tip: Make sure that your running head is descriptive enough to give the reader some idea of the content. If the title of your paper is “Never Too Old: The Calming Effects of Blankies for College Students,” for instance, your running head should be something like “EFFECTS OF BLANKIES FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS” rather than “NEVER TOO OLD” or just “BLANKIES.”

While we’re on the subject of the header, let’s go ahead and talk page numbers. In APA style, you include the page number in the header of every page. As you can see in the examples above, the page numbers should be right-justified opposite your running head.

Cover page

Another key element of APA essay format is the cover page. While the use of a cover page is not unique to APA, the manual does specify a preferred layout, which includes not only the aforementioned running head, but also the following elements:

• The full title of your paper
• Your name
• The name of your school (or wherever you are doing your research/writing).

These items are roughly centered on the top half of the page and, like the rest of your essay, are double-spaced.

Abstract

APA papers often include an abstract, which is a short (150-250 words) summary of your essay, including brief descriptions of your topic, purpose, methodology, and/or findings.

The point of an abstract is to inform potential readers of your essay’s topic and purpose so that they can determine whether the essay is useful or relevant to their own research.

Whether you need to include an abstract depends partially on the whims of your instructor, so if you aren’t sure, just ask!

Assuming that you need to write one, let’s talk formatting.

You should center the word “Abstract” (no quotes, not bold or italicized) at the top of the page. Your abstract should be double-spaced with the first line justified with the left margin (usually, an abstract is a single paragraph, so there’s no need to indent).

While it’s not required, it’s not a bad idea to include keywords beneath your abstract if there’s a chance it will be included in a database as keywords make it easier to locate. Simply type “Keywords” below the abstract—indenting as though you’re starting a new paragraph—and then include a few relevant keywords, separated by commas.

Check out this example:

Main body

The title and intro

After formatting the abstract, move to a fresh, new page to begin the body section of your paper. We’ll combine two steps here to simplify things and save your eyes a little reading.

First, you need to restate the title of your paper. This serves as a label to signify the start of the actual paper.

I know, it seems sort of silly with the running head right there for all the world to see. But silliness aside, it is an APA requirement, so we’ll comply.

Then, it’s time to set up the introduction.

Intr …

Nope. Stop.

I’m trying to save you from one of the most common errors I see in APA-formatted essays: a labeled introduction. You see, the folks at the APA assume that readers are smart enough to know that the first section of a paper is the introduction. (And really, aren’t they right?)

Nothing will implode if you label it. Even professors mistakenly tell you to do so on occasion. But now, even if that happens, you can feel that swell of smug pride that comes with knowing how it’s supposed to be done.

Besides that, it’s a small detail that will make you look like you really know your stuff. Here’s how the first page of the body of your paper should look:

Headings

After your introduction, though, there’s a good chance that you will want to use headings for specific sections of your paper. Let’s look at how you should handle those.

In APA, there are five levels of headings. A level 1 heading is a “main” heading, such as “Literature Review” or “Methodology.” Level 2 headings are subheadings of level 1 headings, and level 3 headings are subheadings of level 2 headings, and so forth.

Each heading has its own specific format, as you can see in the table below.

Block quotations (40+ words in length)

Sometimes, you’ll find a particularly meaty quote that you cannot resist adding to your paper. Just remember that, if the quotation is more than 40 words in length, you need to create a block quotation.

In APA style, this means that you start the quotation on a fresh line, indenting the entire quotation by ½ inch. You do not include quotation marks around it, either.

The closing punctuation also goes immediately after the text of the quote, and no period goes after the parenthetical citation. Check out these examples from the APA blog to see block quotes in action.

Reference list

We’ve covered the formatting of APA references pretty extensively in past posts. Read APA Citation Made Simple (it includes a handy infographic!) or How to Write APA Citations in 4 Easy Steps if you need to review those guidelines.

However, there are a few formatting details to note for the overall page:

1. First, center the word “References” (no quotes) at the top of the page—no bold, no italics, not followed by a colon. (I see all of these variations pretty frequently.) Let me reiterate:

References

2. Next, be sure that you list your entries in alphabetical order according to the author’s last name (or whatever comes first in the entry).

3. Double-space the list, but do not leave an “extra” space between entries. Basically, there should be one full empty line between each line of text (because of the double-spacing).

4. Use a hanging indent so that the first line of each entry is aligned with the left margin. Second and subsequent lines are indented ½ inch.

Here’s an example reference list:

APA Essay Format: Putting It All Together (Plus Some Handy Resources)

Annnnd … that’s the end of the paper! You’re done formatting. You can totally remember all of this, right? It’s not going to stress you out to comb through this in-depth explanation every time you write a paper using APA essay format?

… yeah, I thought it might.

That’s why I made you a handy checklist:

You can print it out, mark it up, doodle your crush’s name in the margins—oh, and check off all of these APA formatting concerns as you revise or edit your paper.

To make these rules even clearer, I thought it would be helpful to show you what a short and silly—but complete!—essay looks like in APA format. Click the link below to open the paper in Google Docs.

Sample APA paper

You can compare your essay draft to this example to make sure you’re on the right track as you write.

You can also view an additional example at the Purdue OWL’s APA site.

The APA Style Blog is another fantastic and authoritative resource for all things style-related, including some lengthier discussions and rationales for some of the style guide’s more obscure rules and preferences.

Just remember: writing the actual content is the hard part. Formatting your essay is simply a matter of plugging the right information into the right locations.

Formatting your APA essay is simply a matter of plugging the right information into the right locations.
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With the checklist and example essay I’ve provided, you have the tools you need to format an APA-style paper that would make even the neatest neat freak proud.

Need a second set of eyes to make sure everything is just right? Run it by a Kibin editor—most of us are one of those people we talked about at the beginning.

Happy writing!

However, it is going to be inherently difficult to convince your reader to agree with you if you don’t have proof.  Unless you can support your argument in a clear and concise way, it won’t matter if you come in peace, or phone home, or have an army of little green men on your side.

Sorry, I’ll stop.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!

Okay, that’s the last one. Promise.

You can claim something, but unless you have quotes, facts, and figures to back it up, it’s just an opinion.

You can claim something, but unless you have facts to back it up, it’s just an opinion.
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Next, you can include lots of quotes, claims, and outside information, but unless it comes from a source with a previously established reputation, your reader won’t take it seriously. You may believe your dad when he swears he saw a UFO when he was 12 years old, but that doesn’t mean I do.

Or maybe you have information from a reputable source, but unless you can prove it by showing me that source, then I can’t be sure that you didn’t make it up.

Writing a reputable academic work involves a hierarchy of reliability.

This is the hierarchy:

• First, you must be able to back up your claim with research
• Second, you have to ensure the research is sound and your sources are credible.
• Finally, you must be able to show the reader your sources, so that they can make an informed decision.

This is where the bibliography comes in. It offers you the chance to back up every claim you make with a list of the sources of your information.

So, what is a bibliography? Why do you need one? Let’s take a closer look.

What Is a Bibliography?

Biblio- means “relating to a book or books,” while –graphy is any “descriptive science.

When we put the two together, we get a rudimentary definition of a bibliography. It is a description of the books used during your research process.

The point of a bibliography is to make your readers aware of the sources you used throughout your work on a project. That means it must include all of the sources you used while researching the topic, whether you quoted from those sources or not.

In general, the bibliography will be a list. This list will clearly and completely compile your sources at the end of your work so readers can easily see where your research comes from.

In general, each reference in your bibliography will include:

• The name of the author(s)
• The title of the resource
• The publisher’s information, including names, locations, and dates
• The page numbers

Depending on the referencing system you use, you may need to include more information, but you will rarely, if ever, include less. We will talk more about making sense of the various systems later.

Now that you know what a bibliography is, why do you really need one?

Why Do You Need a Bibliography?

As we talked about in the introduction, a bibliography is necessary to prove that your research came from reputable sources. This usually includes scholars, academics, historians, scientists and the like.

This typically excludes Aunt Debra after her third Manhattan, the Wikipedia post authored by the freshman at Timbuktu Community College, or any firsthand account from your frat brother Kyle.

However, a bibliography is not solely for protecting your reader against misinformation. It also has the back of all those writers who came before you. It can also protect your writing from others.

When the ideas in your essay end up being lauded as the best of the century, do you want some pipsqueak on the other side of the country copying them into his own essay and claiming them as his own?

So, one of the main purposes of a bibliography is to give credit where credit is due. Avoid plagiarism by including all of your research material in your bibliography. Let your readers know where the basis for your ideas came from in a neat list at the end of your work.

This will also help future researchers. When students fifty years from now are looking into the same subject, they may consult your work. It will be very helpful for them to have a clear list of all of your sources.

This list should include all the research material that you consulted throughout your research and writing process, whether you quoted directly from it or not.

Next, let’s discuss the difference between a bibliography and a works cited page.

How Is a Bibliography Different from a Works Cited or References List?

It is commonly believed that a works cited page, a reference list, and a bibliography are all essentially the same thing. While it’s true that they are similar, sharing many of the same features, there will be times in your academic career when you are asked to provide both a reference list and a bibliography at the end of your work.

So, there has to be a difference.

All works cited and reference lists can be considered bibliographies. However, not all bibliographies can be considered works cited or reference lists. So, what exactly is the difference?

A reference list or works cited, named differently depending on the referencing system, is a list of all of the resources that were directly used in your work. This includes any works that you pulled quotes from to use in your essay. This also includes any works that you may have paraphrased while writing your piece.

Anything cited in your paper should show up on these lists.

These lists are extremely important, because they protect the work of other writers from plagiarism and ensure the integrity of your own writing process.

A bibliography will include these same sources as well, but it will go one step further. The difference between a bibliography and a reference list is that the bibliography includes all works that were used at any point in the research process.

Perhaps, at the beginning of the research phase, you read a book or two about UFO sightings around the world. These books provided you with interesting background knowledge for further research. However, you found all of the claims in the books to be unsubstantiated, so you decided not to include any of them in your final project.

Unlike when putting together a works cited or references page, these books should be included in the bibliography.

This may seem pointless, but when writing a longer work, every resource provides context for your other resources. So, they all must be included in the list of sources you consulted throughout the process, which we now know is called a bibliography.

Because the resources listed in a bibliography are used to varying degrees, your professor will sometimes ask you to write an annotated bibliography for your project.

An annotated bibliography is exactly the same as a normal bibliography, but it asks you to take it a step further. After each reference in an annotated bibliography, you will write a short explanation of the source. Within these explanations, you will discuss whether or not you found the source to be accurate and relevant and how, or if, you used it in your actual writing.

This may seem like a lot of information, but there are great sources out there to help you make sense of it all.

Read How to Write an Annotated Bibliography that Works

What Are Some Resources to Help With a Bibliography?

There are many different referencing systems for citing your work both within your writing and in your bibliography. Each has its own subtle differences.

Choosing one can depend on various factors, including the field of study and the eccentricity of your professor. It is important to confirm with your professor which referencing system is the best for your project.

Once you narrow your focus, it can still be a headache to make sense of them all. Here is a quick list of the most frequently used systems along with a link that will help you learn the ends and outs of using each correctly.

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)
• Harvard System of Referencing

Here are a couple of posts on the Kibin blog that can help you:

• How to Write MLA Citations Without Going Crazy
• How to Write APA Citations in 4 Easy Steps

There are various helpful websites around the interwebs that will help you when it comes time to flesh out that beautiful bibliography. Here are a couple of my favorites:

• EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator
• The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Writing a bibliography may seem a bit complicated, but it really isn’t. Don’t let the process freak you out. Take the time to talk to your professor, read through these resources, and take a look at a few example bibliographies.

For the sake of convenience, I’ve provided a short sample bibliography below. In it you will see a few examples of references related to UFO research.

This example includes three books that could be used in the process of researching extraterrestrials. This bibliography is formatted in MLA style, so a few subtle things will change depending on the referencing system you use.

However, you will notice that the general information I included and many features, such as listing the references in alphabetical order, will be the same no matter which referencing system you use.

Wrapping Up

At first glance, bibliographies can seem pointless. But, as you can see, there are many reasons to create one including protecting your writing and the work of the writers who came before you.

Also, by including a thorough bibliography at the end of your work, you complete that hierarchy of reliability that we talked about at the very beginning of this blog post.

Now that you understand the ins and outs of a good bibliography, you are ready to write your own. Along the way, you may even prove that aliens are using iPhones to phone home.

You can check out some examples of annotated bibliographies in the Kibin database before you get started on your own.

After you write your bibliography, you can send it over to one of our expert editors to make sure your citations (and content) are out-of-this-world good.

The sun shone brightly.

Then one day a dark cloud overshadowed the world. A professor asked the student to write an annotated bibliography. The student grew pale.

She thought she had mastered all things related to citation. She didn’t want to learn how to write anything so terrible sounding as an annotated bibliography.

She closed her eyes tightly and wished her fairy godmother would magically write the annotated bibliography for her.

POOF! Her fairy godmother appeared!

“I will grant your wish….well, sorta,” said the fairy godmother.  “I will not write the annotated bibliography for you, but I will teach you how to write one, thus enabling you to use the skill in your future courses.”

She wrote this blog post to teach all students how to write an annotated bibliography that works.

What Is an Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is simply a bibliography with annotations. Okay, that doesn’t help much, does it?

Really, though, that’s all it is. You know how to write a Works Cited or Reference page, right? If you’ve mastered this, the next step is to simply add the annotations.

Annotations include a summary of the work, a critique of the author or credibility of the source, and a discussion of whether or not the source will be useful to your research.

Why Write an Annotated Bibliography?

I’m sure you’re saying, “Give me one good reason why I should write an annotated bibliography.” I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you three!

1. It’s a course assignment. If you want to do well in the course, you need to do it. Enough said.

2. An annotated bibliography helps you become a better researcher.

In order to write an annotated bibliography, you need to be able to summarize the source. This means you’ll need to take the time to read it carefully. You can’t just find a source and add it to the list without reading it.

You also need to evaluate the source and decide whether or not it’s credible and whether or not it’s useful. Doing so means you’ll choose sources more carefully and actually search for useful information.

No more picking the first few websites that show up on a Google search and trying to make them fit.

3. An annotated bibliography saves you time.

If you’re writing a research paper with three sources, it’s pretty easy to remember what you read in each source. If, on the other hand, you’re writing a longer research paper and using 10 or more sources, it’s not that easy.

Imagine you’re on page 5 of your research essay, and you remember reading the perfect quote about binge drinking in…um…well, you read it in one of your sources, somewhere.

Unless you have some magic fairy dust to help remember everything you’ve read, you’ll likely spend 25 minutes looking for that perfect quote.

Trust me, writing an annotated bibliography may seem like a major pain now, but once you see how much time it will save you, and once you see a good grade on your paper, you’ll be happy you wrote it.

Before You Begin Writing

Do your research!

You can’t exactly write an annotated bibliography without sources, so start researching!

If you’re not sure where to find sources read 5 Best Resources to Help with Writing a Research Paper.

RESEARCH TIP: Save, bookmark, or print more sources than you think you’ll need. Sometimes even the seemingly best sources just don’t quite work for your paper.

Read and take notes.

You don’t have to spend hours taking notes on every little detail, but you should mark the following, as you’ll need them to write your annotations:

• The main ideas of the source
• Questions or comments about the argument’s or author’s credibility
• Key points or quotes that you might include in your paper
• Whether or not the source will be useful in your research paper

Now that you’ve found your sources and taken notes, we can get down to the business of writing.

Remember, there will be no waiving of fairy godmother wands to magically produce a completed annotated bibliography. You will need to write your own.

So let’s get started.

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography that Works

Not all annotated bibliographies are written in the same way. Some include primarily summary and informative annotations. Others include a critique of sources. Most annotated bibliographies contain some combination of elements and can vary in word count.

Don’t assume you know which type you should be writing. Ask your professor about the exact requirements for your assignment.

Follow these 3 steps to learn about the basics of how to write an annotated bibliography.

Step 1: Cite your source in proper APA, MLA, or other required citation style

Each of your entries will begin with a full bibliographic entry.

This entry looks just like the entry you’d include on a regular Works Cited or Reference page. Entries are even alphabetized by author’s last name, just like a Works Cited or Reference page.

Here’s an example I created to show you what the citation will look like.

APA format

Robertson, A. (2012). Why fairy tales are important. Psychology Today. (13)2, 210-222.

MLA format – 7th edition

Roberston, Ann. “Why Fairy Tales are Important.” Psychology Today. 13.2 (2012): 210-222.  Print.

MLA format – 8th edition

Roberston, Ann. “Why Fairy Tales Are Important.” Psychology Today, vol. 13, no. 2, 2012, pp. 210-222.

Need some help with APA or MLA?  Read How to Write APA Citations in 4 Easy Steps and How to Write MLA Citations Without Going Crazy.

Step 2: Summarize the source

A summary explains the main ideas of the source.

Someone else should be able to read your summary and know exactly what the source is about.

This isn’t the time to tell readers whether or not you like the source. Be objective. Just state what the source is about. No more, no less.

Here’s an example of what a summary of an article might look like.

Robertson’s article argues that fairy tales are important because they teach children moral tales of right and wrong and provide children an outlet for their emotions. Fairy tales also allow children to develop their imagination and critical thinking as they journey with characters to magical lands.

Step 3: Evaluate the source

Here’s your chance to write a brief paragraph or two to tell readers what you think of the source and how it fits into your own research. I’ve color coded the questions you should ask, so that you can clearly see what’s going on in my example below.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Is the author credible?
• What did I like or not like about the source?
• Are the arguments effective?
• Does the author support her arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses?
• How might I incorporate this source into my paper?

Answering these types of questions will help you formulate an effective critique and evaluation of each source.

Here’s an example of what your evaluation might look like.

Dr. Robertson is a well-known children’s psychologist who also has elementary education experience. Her articles are published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, and her work is considered credible.

The article will be an excellent source for my paper because it includes recent studies about children’s appreciation for fairy tales and features a detailed discussion of why fairy tales are beneficial to children. Robertson even includes interviews with children that I may be able to use in my introduction.

That wasn’t as bad as you thought, was it? Just three quick steps and you have an annotated bibliography!

If you need a quick way to remember the steps in writing an annotated bibliography, just remember CSE: Cite, Summarize, Evaluate.

Putting It All Together

Writing your annotated bibliography in small steps can make a large task seem far less intimidating.

Now that you know how to write each part of an annotated bibliography, the final step is to put it all together and make sure it’s in proper format.

These sample APA and MLA annotations will help guide you.

They Lived Happily Ever After

At the end of the day, the student learned how to write an annotated bibliography.

She knew she needed to write an appropriate MLA or APA citation followed by a summary and evaluation of the source.

The student worked diligently to write an annotated bibliography then had a Kibin editor review her work.

Both the fairy godmother and the student were delighted when the student received her final grade.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Useful Resources to Help Write an Annotated Bibliography

Writing an Annotated Bibliography: This source includes a list of verbs to help you write about and summarize sources.

Annotated Bibliography: Tips for Writing: This source includes an overview of how to write an annotated bibliography and a template to help you write annotations.

Finally, this short video provides a basic overview of an annotated bibliography.

Good luck!

Can you plagiarize on accident? What counts as plagiarism? What are you going to do?

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

All right. Knock off your caps lock already. Keep calm and read on. I’ve got answers for you. Let me teach you how to avoid plagiarism in your writing.

What Is Plagiarism Exactly?

No one wants to speak up in class and ask the seemingly obvious question: What is plagiarism? How can I know how to avoid plagiarism if I don’t know what it is?

Read on, and I’ll give you what you need to know.

First of all, Merriam-Webster describes plagiarism as the “the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person,” but you probably already looked that up, and it doesn’t exactly lay it out for you. I mean, your research essay or book report is going to be full of another person’s ideas, right?

Plagiarism can be any of the following:

• Using someone’s exact quote without quotation marks
• Copying someone else’s work word for word from start to finish
• Not properly attributing the quote to the author using your appropriate style guide
• “Paraphrasing” too closely to the original text

So, that’s all fine and dandy, but what’s the big deal about avoiding plagiarism? Is there really such a thing as an original idea anyway?

Why Plagiarism Can Be Deadly

Plagiarism can quite literally kill your grades, even if you have committed an act of plagiarism on accident. But, what’s the problem? Why are instructors so worked up about plagiarism?

If you think about someone’s writing or idea as intellectual property, then re-using that idea or writing without attribution is a lot like stealing. Stealing is illegal, and plagiarism has similar repercussions.

Don’t think you can pull a fast one on your instructor by plagiarizing on purpose, either. There are plenty of free plagiarism checkers online now, so it is not difficult for a teacher or professor to bust you.

Plagiarism is not the easy way out of writing an essay.

Though you might not think that the information you included without attribution in your paper about the history of silkworms really constitutes stealing, think again. Your instructors want you to use your own work so you can get a grade that is truly representative of the work you did for the class.

Now that I’ve told you all the horror stories associated with plagiarism, let’s turn the flashlights off, get away from the campfire, and go back to the drawing board.

How to Avoid Plagiarism – 3 Easy Methods

Let’s talk about how to avoid plagiarism.

To avoid plagiarizing, you have several options: paraphrasing, using quotation marks, and citing your sources.

To avoid plagiarizing, you have options: paraphrasing, using quotation marks, and citing sources.
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For formal papers, a combination of those methods is often necessary.

Method 1. Paraphrasing

When writing a research paper of any sort, you will likely end up paraphrasing a lot. Once you have collected all your sources, you will use the information you learned to draw conclusions about your topic.

This method is super useful because, as we all know, you can’t just quote sources back to back to back to back. That would get you the same bad grade that plagiarizing would. Can’t have that. No sir.

Instead, you can paraphrase. Paraphrasing is a lot like summarizing except that, instead of condensing the information in the source, you just reword the information.

Here is a quote from the Gettysburg Address to use as an example:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

If I wanted to paraphrase that, it might look something like this:

The founders of this nation were devoted to freedom and equality when they formed the United States 47 years before the Gettysburg Address.

Essentially, the two sentences mean the same thing, even though Abe Lincoln might have been more eloquent than I am. Remember that, depending on the style guide you are using, you still have to cite the source of your paraphrase in the text and/or on your essay’s reference page.

But, the point here is don’t plagiarize.

If you were to just say that our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty without any quotation marks or attribution or anything, you’ve just plagiarized, friend.

Also remember that you can’t just paraphrase for your whole essay either (aww, shucks). You have to intertwine your ideas with the ideas presented in your source material.

(Read 10 Examples of Paraphrasing for a Smarter, Better Essay)

Method 2. Using Quotation Marks

The second way to learn how to avoid plagiarism is to use quotation marks. This method is relatively straightforward, but you need know to where you need quotation marks and when you can leave them out.

Say you are going to use the opening line of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Raven.” How much of the sentence should you quote? If you are just referencing a few words, do you need to quote them? Let’s look at some examples.

For this example, we will use the following sentence:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”

If you wanted to use textual evidence to prove that the speaker in the poem was tired when he encountered the raven, you might say something like this:

It is important to note that the speaker is “weak and weary,” which may have contributed to his or her irritation at the raven.

Because the words “weak” and “weary” represent an important thought in the text, the phrase needs to be quoted directly.

However, if you were explaining why that quote is important, you wouldn’t write something like this:

Though the raven sat “upon a” bust peacefully, the speaker quickly becomes irritated with the raven’s presence, possibly due to his or her lack of sleep.

Here, because “upon a” doesn’t really convey an important idea and is a commonly used phrase, you don’t need to quote it just because the words happen to appear in the poem you are writing about.

Look! You’re one step closer to learning how to avoid plagiarism! It will soon be a thing of the past for you.

Method 3. Citing Your Sources

Hopefully, your instructor told you which citation manual you should be using, usually, MLA, APA, or Chicago. Using one of those style guides, you need to make sure that all the sources you used to construct your argument or research paper are appropriately included. You will likely have to include in-text as well as full citations.

(Need more help with MLA? Read How to Write MLA Citations Without Going Crazy)

If you don’t include your citations, and you used a source that is not listed, even if you were paraphrasing, that is still plagiarism. If, after paraphrasing, quoting, and citing, you’re still concerned about plagiarism in your work, check your paper with this handy plagiarism checker!

Once your paper is drafted, head over to Kibin for some essay editing help, so we can make sure your citations are correct, your quotations are seamless, and your paraphrases are grammatically sound.

Good luck!

Contrary to popular opinion, APA does NOT stand for A Pain in the A**. Though it may seem so.

Rather, APA stands for American Psychological Association. This group represents the largest professional organization of psychologists in North America with 137,000 members (or so says Wikipedia).

As a publisher of a multitude of scientific journals, the APA has developed a style guide that is used by researchers, academics, students, and publishers in the social sciences.

Since you’re reading this blog post, someone probably told you to use APA citation in your work too.

At first, APA rules can seem cumbersome and confusing. However, learning how to use APA citation isn’t so bad once you get used to the basics.

This handy APA Citation Made Simple infographic can help you make sense of it all. The graphic covers the basic elements of writing APA in-text citations and corresponding reference list entries. We’ll cover the following information:

• Identify the source type. Is your source a book? a web page? a journal? a magazine? or something else entirely? You have to know this before you cite!
• Plug in your information. It’s important to know exactly what elements to include in your reference list, which words should be capitalized and italicized, and where to put your punctuation.
• Add to your reference list. Remember to build your references as you write, and always list them alphabetically by the first word in the entry.
• Create the in-text citation. It sounds more complicated than it is! Follow these simple steps to give credit where credit is due (no matter how many authors you have in your source!)
• Additional resources. There are several apps that help you build your reference list and generate citations. I give you the low-down.

For a more detailed explanation of this graphic, I recommend reading How to Write APA Citations in 4 Easy Steps.

And now, without further ado…

APA Citation Made Simple (Infographic)

Seeking and consuming information can be addictive, you know.

Mmm. Dopamine.

You’re feeling pretty good about your level of understanding and can hardly wait to turn your newfound knowledge into a masterpiece when you see it. At the bottom of your assignment sheet, in bold print, your professor has written, “Please include appropriate APA citations.”

You glance nervously at the MLA-style Works Cited you’ve started. Or, worse yet, at your list of raw URLs and notes like “p. 23 green textbook by Steve B.” You start to sweat a little.

Buzzkill, man.

If this scenario sounds all too familiar, take a deep breath and stop panicking.

You’ve got this.

I’m going to help you learn how to write APA citations (and reference list entries!) in 4 easy steps.

APA Citations: What They Are and Who Uses Them

Before you learn how to write APA citations, it helps to understand what the APA is.

The acronym “APA” stands for the American Psychological Association, a US-based scientific and professional organization for psychologists. This organization has its own style guide, including a system for citing sources in research.

But wait, you say. I’m no psychologist.

That may be true! Maybe you’re a still a psychology student, or maybe you’re a biology major taking psychology as an elective, or maybe you’re majoring in something like math and your professor just really digs APA style.

Even though the APA is an organization for psychologists, its citation style is used by professionals and students in a variety of disciplines, including those in the fields of sociology, business, economics, nursing, business, and others.

And if you’re going to be a professional in one of those fields one day, knowing how to cite your sources in a standardized format ensures that you are on the same page, so to speak, as your colleagues in the field. (We’ve said it before: formatting matters!)

Now, let’s talk about the citations themselves.

An APA citation has two parts:

1. the in-text citation that appears in the actual text of your paper, and
2. a reference list entry that appears in the list of sources you consulted when writing your paper.

The purpose of the in-text citation is to point your readers toward the reference list, where they can see the full list of sources you paraphrased or quoted. This is really important, because “green textbook by Steve B.” is pretty much meaningless to anyone but you.

Now that you know what APA citations are, let’s learn how to construct them.

4 Easy Steps for Creating APA Citations (and Building Your Reference List at the Same Time)

Writing APA citations is easy-peasy. No, really; I promise!

It’s so easy, in fact, that I’m going to recommend that you take it a step further and write your reference list at the same time. This saves you time as you’re putting the finishing touches on your paper and ensures that you never have to scramble to figure out which Smith wrote which book in 1997.

When you go through this process is up to you. But why not get it out of the way?

It’s a really good idea to cite your source the second you use another author’s idea — paraphrased or quoted — in your research paper.

Cite your source the second you use another author’s idea in your research paper. #citations
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This ensures that you don’t accidentally forget to credit an author, and it saves you from last-minute panic attacks as you scramble to remember where you found a piece of information.

Okay, so now that you know when to put your references together, let’s dig into how.

Step 1: Identify the source type

The type of source you’re citing actually doesn’t make a big difference when it comes to creating the in-text citation. But since we’re killing two (proverbial, of course) birds with one stone by creating the reference list entry alongside the citation, you should define your source type from the get-go.

Many of the sources you cite will be obvious: books, journal articles, magazine articles, and so forth. Other sources, such as white papers and government documents, can be a little harder to pin down.

Knowing what kind of source you’re citing leads you right into step 2.

Step 2: Locate the structure for the source and plug in your information

Each type of source that you might need to cite follows a specific structure. Once you have nailed down exactly what you’re working with, you need to find the structure for the source’s reference list entry.

Then, creating your reference list entry is as simple as plugging in the information.

I’ll save you some trouble and list the basic structures for some of the most common sources you will encounter:

Book

Author, A. (Date). Title of book in sentence case. Publisher’s location: publisher.

Journal article

Author, A. (Date). Title of article in sentence case: Capitalize the first word that comes after the colon. Title of Journal in Title Case, volume number(issue number), page range.

Web page

Author, A. (Date). Title of document found on web page in sentence case. Retrieved from http://www.URL.com

Not all sources are this common or as cut-and-dried, though. If the type of source you’re citing is more complex, try the APA resources from the Purdue OWL. This site is a great resource for citation structures of all kinds.

The APA Style Blog is another great resource for citing less-common sources. For instance, this post describes how to cite a variety of web-based documents and pages that fall outside of the standard form. It also provides helpful advice on citing legal documents, personal communication, and more.

Sometimes, you’ll discover that a source is missing a piece of information — don’t panic! Bookmark this handy chart from the APA Style Blog; it tells you how to handle situations such as missing authors, missing titles, and so forth.

Finally, if you run into a source that is truly difficult to cite, visit your university library or its website. It likely has a copy of or subscription to the full APA Style Manual that you can peruse for those truly hard-to-cite sources.

Step 3: Add to the reference list

As I mentioned before, I strongly recommend that you write your reference list as you cite sources in the text. I can’t tell you how often I run into stray in-text citations without reference list entries when I edit.

Can you imagine trying to remember what (Smith, 1997) refers to several weeks after you cited it? Save yourself the trouble — trust me.

Now that you’ve plugged the information into the structure for the citation, it’s time to add the reference list entry to your list.

Place your reference list entries in alphabetical order when you add them to the reference list — not the order in which you cite them. Still not sure if you’re getting it right? Check out this example reference list I started:

Step 4: Create the in-text citation

Once you’ve written your reference list entry, the hardest part of citing sources in APA is over. Woohoo! Thankfully, there aren’t too many rules to remember when it comes to creating APA citations themselves.

For most citations, you need three pieces of info, tops: the author’s name(s), the year the source was published, and — especially if you’re quoting directly — the page number on which the information is found. By the time you reach step 4, you already know all of this!

The  basic structure looks like this:

(Author, Year, p. #)

That’s not too scary, is it? If your source has two authors, in-text citations become more complex — but only slightly:

(Author & Author, Year, p. #)

If there are three to five authors, you format your citations like so:

(Author, Author, Author, Author, & Author, Year, p. #)

….but only the first time you use them. Rather than packing all of these authors into every citation like it’s a clown car, you can use the handy-dandy Latin phrase ‘et al.’ (please don’t forget the period after ‘al.’!) to save yourself some typing:

(Author et al., Year, p. #)

But what about those journal articles with six authors? Ten? you may wonder. Do I really have to write all those out?

Thankfully, you don’t! You can use the ‘et al.’ abbreviation from the get-go if there are more than five authors. Phew.

This blog post from the APA includes a handy chart to help you keep those rules straight.

Now, let’s look at a couple of real-world examples. Let’s say that you really want to use this quote from the preface of Clay A. Johnson’s book The Information Diet in your paper:

“In the world of agriculture, we now have factory farms churning out junk food; and in the world of media, we now have content farms churning out junk information.”

Now, let’s add your parenthetical citation:

“In the world of agriculture, we now have factory farms churning out junk food; and in the world of media, we now have content farms churning out junk information” (Johnson, 2011, p. xi).

That’s it! Notice how the period goes at the end, after the citation, rather than before the quotation marks.

One cool thing about APA citations is that you actually have options. (I love options). If you want to change things up a bit, you can also slip the author’s name and the date into the running text:

As Johnson (2011) states, “In the world of agriculture, we now have factory farms churning out junk food; and in the world of media, we now have content farms churning out junk information” (p. xi).

Here’s another example. Let’s say that you also found a great journal article about dopamine by K.C. Berridge and T.E. Robinson and need to cite it:

In addition, “dopamine systems are necessary for ‘wanting’ incentives, but not for ‘liking’ them or for learning new ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’” (Berridge & Robinson, 1998, p. 309).

More Resources

After a while, creating APA citations for common source types becomes second nature. While you’re still getting the hang of formating them, though, free online citation generators can be really helpful tools.

Bibme.org is one such tool. It’s most helpful for common sources, such as books and journal articles, but you can use its built-in search function to search for certain sources and auto-populate the information for you. (It’s not a bad idea to verify the information, though).

Then, with the click of a button, it generates an APA citation that you can copy and paste into your reference list, save to your account, and more. You can even generate a parenthetical citation.

Son of Citation Machine has a very similar interface and functionality; you simply plug in your information (or use the search function) to receive both a reference list entry and in-text citation that you can copy and paste into your paper.

Most automated citation builders cite a limited range of document types, but Citefast includes a few document types that the previous two builders don’t, such as government publications and podcasts.

Want to test your skills? Play a few rounds of APA Psych Out from Williams College Libraries, or check out three additional APA citation games from the Peru State College website.

Think you’ve got the hang of it? Let us check your work before you turn it in!