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About this lesson

Learn to cite your sources for a college paper or report.

Lesson versions

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2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Citations and Bibliography.docx
56.1 KB Citations and Bibliography - Solution.docx
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Quick reference

Citations and Bibliography

Learn to cite your sources for a college essay or report.

When to use

CITATION

A reference for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion… to uphold intellectual honesty or avoid plagiarism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A list of the sources and citations used to support your paper, typically 3 sources per paper in academic settings.

Instructions

Add a citation after a quote

  1. In your document, click the References Ribbon, Citations & Bibliography group.
  2. Click the Style arrow and choose a style.
    This is usually specifically stated by your instructor as to which style he/she requires.
  3. Click at the end of the text that you want to cite. 
  4. Click Insert Citation and then select Add New Source. 
  5. Choose the Type of Source
  6. Enter the citation details and click OK.
    As you complete these steps for each citation, it is added to the Insert Citation button so you will not have to re-type it if you reference it again.
     

Create a bibliography (aka “references” list) from your sources

If this is a formal paper, you will include the Bibliography of your Citations. It is standard to place
the bibliography at the end of a document. 

  1. Go the end of your document to the top of a new blank page
  2. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Bibliography. 
  3. Select one of the predesigned formats listed.
  4. As new citations are added, click the Bibliography Title and choose “Update Bibliography”
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  • 00:04 This lesson is about citations and bibliographies.
  • 00:08 In college-level papers, it’s absolutely appropriate and
  • 00:11 required to give proper acknowledgement of where you gathered your information from.
  • 00:15 Those are called citations.
  • 00:17 The bibliography is in the gathering of that list of citations at the end
  • 00:21 of the document.
  • 00:22 So let's go ahead and build them right here.
  • 00:24 First of all, where are they located?
  • 00:26 On the References ribbon, we have an entire section called Citations and
  • 00:30 Bibliography.
  • 00:31 Here we have our Insert Citation, our Manage our Sources, your Style,
  • 00:35 which your instructor will tell you which style to use.
  • 00:38 And then of course the Bibliography section at the end, and
  • 00:42 the Bibliography style.
  • 00:43 So let's go ahead and start.
  • 00:45 First of all,
  • 00:46 in this particular paragraph, I'm just gonna copy the website reference,
  • 00:51 and then I'm going to place it right at the end of this paragraph at that point.
  • 00:55 All right, so, let's go ahead and click Insert Citation > Add a New Source.
  • 00:59 Now these sources will change and
  • 01:03 will actually, you'll have a list of sources in case you use multiple ones.
  • 01:07 In this case, I'm hitting the source type and this is a website.
  • 01:12 And so I'll go ahead and just paste the website source right there.
  • 01:15 Now the name of the website is not the URL,
  • 01:18 it's actually the proper name of the website.
  • 01:21 And because I don't have an author, I'll just put Author Name Here, so
  • 01:24 we can see the reference to that, and the year that I made this, okay.
  • 01:29 And now I’ll go ahead and click on OK, and as you can see,
  • 01:32 the citation shows up right here.
  • 01:34 So because I wrote Author Name Here,
  • 01:37 it just gave me his last name here and then 2016.
  • 01:40 Now notice that this, when I float my mouse over at it, turns gray.
  • 01:44 Cuz it's a field.
  • 01:45 If it's a field, when you click on it you're gonna have field options.
  • 01:49 And so I can Edit Citation, Source, Convert to static text.
  • 01:53 I can update it, so you can click on any one of these items.
  • 01:58 When I click Edit, I can tell it suppress the author, the year, the title, or
  • 02:03 I can add pages to it.
  • 02:05 It's up to you, all the changes you make in there.
  • 02:07 But I just want you to know that you have that ability to do that.
  • 02:11 All right, let's go ahead and get this next one.
  • 02:13 I'm gonna highlight, oops, highlight this next section.
  • 02:16 Had a little difficulty there.
  • 02:18 Copy that, and then put the citation right behind this line.
  • 02:21 And we're gonna go ahead and Insert Citation again.
  • 02:24 See, the last one I made is right there in case I need to use it again.
  • 02:29 All right, so Add a New Source.
  • 02:31 And again, type of source is going to be a website, right there,
  • 02:36 and of course go ahead and add all the information.
  • 02:40 Name of the website does not include the URL section and
  • 02:45 the year, month, day if you wanted.
  • 02:48 At this point for this example, it doesn't matter.
  • 02:51 All right, and so now I'm gonna go ahead and hit OK again.
  • 02:55 Now I'm gonna delete these lines at the end,
  • 02:59 to make it look a little more cleaned up.
  • 03:01 And now, let's go ahead and create the actual bibliography.
  • 03:06 Bibliography is at the bottom of the document,
  • 03:09 you can put it on a separate page.
  • 03:10 Generally, always, it is on a separate page.
  • 03:12 So, to break the page right here, I press Ctrl+Enter.
  • 03:16 Brand new page, there we go.
  • 03:18 And now we're gonna go ahead and choose a bibliography style.
  • 03:22 So, do you want the title to say Bibliography or
  • 03:25 References or Work Cited, I'm gonna go with this top one.
  • 03:28 And it happened that fast, look at that.
  • 03:32 Now, notice again, it's gray.
  • 03:33 So if I click on it, I do have options right over here.
  • 03:36 I can change things.
  • 03:38 I can update it.
  • 03:40 It's pretty great, and I have to tell you, I went to school and college in the 1980s.
  • 03:45 We didn't have these great little features.
  • 03:47 We didn't even have Microsoft Word.
  • 03:48 It took almost as long to type the bibliography on our papers as it did to
  • 03:52 actually write the paper.
  • 03:54 So, be happy that you have these features available.
  • 03:57 And use them, if you're a college student, use them.
  • 04:00 Thank you.

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