Holy Moley, It's Documentation!

One of the least sexy but most crucial part of a researched essay is documentation: providing your readers with the sources for the information you use to compose your own essay.  One of the reasons for doing this is academic integrity, that is, avoiding plagiarism.  The issue of plagiarism is something I will get into in a future post; for now I'll just say that documentation is an essay writer's way of giving credit where credit is due.  If nothing else, it's simply the ethical and moral thing to give credit to those whose words and/or ideas you use.

This post, however, focuses on the second reason for providing documentation.  Ideally, your readers (and any readers of a researched essay, article or book) should be able to reconstruct your research if they so choose, and they can do that only if you provide them with full disclosure as to what sources you used and where one can find them.

And if you find neither of those reasons particularly compelling, I can offer a more practical one: your teachers will want full and accurate documentation, and many teachers will fail an essay that does not have source documentation, or even badly-entered source documentation.  So ultimately, if you need inspiration to get your documentation right, just keep in mind that for the vast majority of teachers, your grade for a researched essay will be in serious jeopardy if you don't get the documentation correct. 

Yes, this includes me.  While for your first two assignments I am focusing more on content, for the last two I will be focusing on both content and proper documentation.  For the final two assignments your grade will be affected by how accurately you document your sources.  My rationale is again very practical.  I want place more emphasis on proper documentation because your future teachers will likely place emphasis on it.

Two Forms of Documentation

There are two forms of documentation: in-text citation and bibliographic.  I deal with bibliographic documentation below.  In-text citation refers to crediting your sources in the body of the essay itself, rather than just at the end of the document.  In-text citations are very abbreviated, typically including only the last name of the author and page number from which the quote or idea comes.  (The exact information included depends upon the citation style you use.)  For information on in-text citation, I recommend navigating to the OWL at Purdue (something I talk about a little later in this post).

MLA, APA or Chicago?

These represent the three most common styles of citation (though MLA and APA are the two most dominant).  Any of these styles are acceptable.  Sometimes your teachers will specify that you use a particular style; otherwise, choose whichever one you want.  Typically I recommend basing your choice on the style most commonly used in your chosen field of study.  I, for example, most commonly use MLA style, because that's the style most common to my field.

Like Baking a Cake

The good news for you in all of this is that proper documentation is pretty easy.  Documentation is rule-bound, like baking a cake (which is a formula, rather than a recipe).  You don't have to interpret or guess at anything--you just need to follow the rules.  You can find many, many places and texts that will tell you what those rules are, and since they are rules, pretty much every place will give you the same information.  There are two places I want to point you to that you might find helpful, and the final place I mention you may find particularly interesting and valuable.
 
1. The OWL at Purdue - In our Content section, in the Online Resources for College Writing folder, you'll see a link to the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue.  This is a terrific source of information about writing.  If you click on that link, you'll be taken to the home page of the OWL.  On the right you'll see a list of Most Popular Resources, and included on that list you'll see links to the APA and MLA style guides.  Click on the link you want to open those pages.  (If you do this through D2L, you may receive a message basically telling you that OWL is a bit suspicious of the intentions of D2L.  There will be a "Click Here" link, however, that will allow you to get into the page you want.)  Once you're there, you'll see a plenitude of resources on the proper ways to document a source.  However, there is a source that makes this whole process very simple, as I explain below.

2. KnightCite Citation Service - In our Links to Course Resources module on our course home page in D2l, I've added a link to a site entitled KnightCite Citation Service.  If you click on that link, this is what you will see:

KnightCite will construct the documentation for you, at least for the Works Cited list (not for in-text citation--for in-text citation I recommend using the OWL for guidelines).

While this may seem a little "dirty," it's not--it's a legitimate and useful site.  Now, you're not completely off the hook here in terms of how much you have to contribute to documentation.  While all you do is fill in the blanks, you still need to make sure you have all the information--and accurate information--you need for the blanks.  So you still need to record for yourself what sources you use, and all necessary bibliographic information.  You'll need not only title and author, but--just to offer some examples--such things as dates of publication, page numbers, publisher, journal or magazine in which the article was published, database from which you retrieved the article, date on which you accessed a website, publisher/host of a website, etc. etc.  What information you need depends upon the type of reference you're using.  And if you look at the boxes from KnightCite, those boxes are telling you what information you need.


Documenting websites and online sources is still one of the areas in which students are shakiest in documentation.  For website documentation, for example, we still often get an ungodly-long URL address (4, 5 even 6 lines long) copy-pasted into the essay--which is incorrect documentation format.  This is where KnightCite can be especially helpful.  Let me show you.  Suppose I were writing an essay on how to survive a Zombie Apocalypse.  (Yes, in fact, I've actually researched this as part of a class I was teaching).  Here is a link to an article published by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control, a highly-respected government agency): Zombie Apocalypse.  So let's say that I use the article, and so need to document that in my Works Cited list.  I can go to KnightCite, click on MLA Citation Style (since I'm in English), scroll down then click on "Website Document" at the very bottom left.  That will open up the box for citing a website document.  Below is an image of that box, with all of the necessary information filled in:

So we're good to go now.  I've filled in my information, click on <Submit>, and voila:

I now have my citation, properly formatted.

Piazza