Bibliographies and Citations

A bibliography is a list of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.) that were referenced or consulted in the preparation of a work, typically formatted according to a specific citation style.

Citations serve to give credit to the original authors of the works used, allow readers to locate the sources, and help avoid plagiarism.

An in-text citation is a brief reference within the text of a paper that indicates the source of information or ideas, typically including the author's last name and the year of publication.

In APA style, you cite a source with one author by including the author's last name and the year of publication in parentheses, e.g., (Smith, 2020).

In APA style, you cite a source with two authors by listing both authors' last names separated by an ampersand, e.g., (Smith & Jones, 2020).

In APA style, for a source with three or more authors, you cite it in-text using the first author's last name followed by 'et al.', e.g., (Smith et al., 2020).

A bibliography includes all sources consulted, while a works cited page lists only the sources that were directly referenced in the text.

In MLA style, a website citation typically includes the author's name, the title of the page, the website name, the publication date, and the URL.

'n.d.' stands for 'no date' and is used in citations when the publication date of a source is not available.

The access date indicates when the source was last accessed by the researcher, which is important for online content that may change over time.