how do you cite facts in an essay

When to Cite a Source in a Paper

And What Is Common Knowledge?

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• Writing Research Papers
• Writing Essays
• English Grammar
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

"Write an essay and back it up with facts."

How many times have you heard a teacher or professor say this? But many students might wonder what exactly counts as a fact, and what doesn't. That means they don't know when it is proper to cite a source, and when it's OK not to use a citation.

Dictionary.com states that a fact is:

• Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed.

"Demonstrated" is a hint here. What the teacher means when she/he tells you to use facts is that you need to back up your claims with some evidence that supports your claims (sources). It's one trick that teachers use to make sure you actually use some references when you write a paper, instead of simply offering a list of your opinions.

This may sound easy, but it's actually tough sometimes to know when you need to back up a statement with evidence and when it is fine to leave a statement unsupported.

When to Cite a Source

You should use evidence ( citations ) any time you make a claim that is not based on a well-known fact or common knowledge. Here's a list of situations when your teacher would expect a citation:

• You make a specific claim that could be challenged--like London is the foggiest city in the world. 
• You quote somebody.
• You make a specific claim that is not common knowledge like the Indian Ocean is the youngest of the world's major oceans.
• You paraphrase information from a source (give the meaning but change the wording).
• Offer an authoritative (expert) opinion--like "germs cause pneumonia."
• You got an idea from somebody else, even through email or conversation.

Although there may be interesting facts that you have believed or know for many years, you will be expected to provide proof of those facts when you're writing a paper for school.

Examples of Claims You Should Support

• Hot water can freeze faster than cold water.
• Poodles are friendlier than Dalmatians.
• American Chestnut trees are nearly extinct.
• Eating while driving is more dangerous than talking on the cell phone while driving.
• Thomas Edison invented a vote counter.

When You Don't Need to Cite a Source

So how do you know when you do not need to cite a source? Common knowledge is basically a fact that practically everyone knows, like the fact that George Washington was a U.S. president.

More Examples of Common Knowledge or Well-Known Facts

• Bears hibernate in the winter.
• Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees F.
• Many trees shed their leaves in the fall.
• Some trees do not shed their leaves in the fall.
• Bears hibernate.

A well-known fact is something that many people know, but it is also something that a reader could look up easily if he/she didn't know.

• It's best to plant flowers in the early spring.
• Holland is famous for its tulips.
• Canada has a multilingual population.

If you're not really certain about something being common knowledge, you could give it the little sister test. If you have a younger sibling, ask him or her the subject you're pondering. If you get an answer, it could be common knowledge!

A Good Rule of Thumb

A good rule of thumb for any writer is to go ahead and use a citation when you're not certain whether or not the citation is necessary. The only risk in doing this is littering your paper with unnecessary citations that will drive your teacher crazy. Too many citations will give your teacher the impression that you are attempting to stretch your paper to a certain word count!

Simply trust your own best judgment and be honest with yourself. You'll get the hang of it soon!

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How to Cite an Essay

Last Updated: February 4, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diya Chaudhuri, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Diya Chaudhuri holds a PhD in Creative Writing (specializing in Poetry) from Georgia State University. She has over 5 years of experience as a writing tutor and instructor for both the University of Florida and Georgia State University. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 555,896 times.

If you're writing a research paper, whether as a student or a professional researcher, you might want to use an essay as a source. You'll typically find essays published in another source, such as an edited book or collection. When you discuss or quote from the essay in your paper, use an in-text citation to relate back to the full entry listed in your list of references at the end of your paper. While the information in the full reference entry is basically the same, the format differs depending on whether you're using the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), or Chicago citation method.

Template and Examples

• Example: Potter, Harry.

• Example: Potter, Harry. "My Life with Voldemort."

• Example: Potter, Harry. "My Life with Voldemort." Great Thoughts from Hogwarts Alumni , by Bathilda Backshot,

• Example: Potter, Harry. "My Life with Voldemort." Great Thoughts from Hogwarts Alumni , by Bathilda Backshot, Hogwarts Press, 2019,

• Example: Potter, Harry. "My Life with Voldemort." Great Thoughts from Hogwarts Alumni , by Bathilda Backshot, Hogwarts Press, 2019, pp. 22-42.

MLA Works Cited Entry Format:

LastName, FirstName. "Title of Essay." Title of Collection , by FirstName Last Name, Publisher, Year, pp. ##-##.

• For example, you might write: While the stories may seem like great adventures, the students themselves were terribly frightened to confront Voldemort (Potter 28).
• If you include the author's name in the text of your paper, you only need the page number where the referenced material can be found in the parenthetical at the end of your sentence.
• If you have several authors with the same last name, include each author's first initial in your in-text citation to differentiate them.
• For several titles by the same author, include a shortened version of the title after the author's name (if the title isn't mentioned in your text).

• Example: Granger, H.

• Example: Granger, H. (2018).

• Example: Granger, H. (2018). Adventures in time turning.

• Example: Granger, H. (2018). Adventures in time turning. In M. McGonagall (Ed.), Reflections on my time at Hogwarts

• Example: Granger, H. (2018). Adventures in time turning. In M. McGonagall (Ed.), Reflections on my time at Hogwarts (pp. 92-130). Hogwarts Press.

APA Reference List Entry Format:

LastName, I. (Year). Title of essay. In I. LastName (Ed.), Title of larger work (pp. ##-##). Publisher.

• For example, you might write: By using a time turner, a witch or wizard can appear to others as though they are actually in two places at once (Granger, 2018).
• If you use the author's name in the text of your paper, include the parenthetical with the year immediately after the author's name. For example, you might write: Although technically against the rules, Granger (2018) maintains that her use of a time turner was sanctioned by the head of her house.
• Add page numbers if you quote directly from the source. Simply add a comma after the year, then type the page number or page range where the quoted material can be found, using the abbreviation "p." for a single page or "pp." for a range of pages.

• Example: Weasley, Ron.

• Example: Weasley, Ron. "Best Friend to a Hero."

• Example: Weasley, Ron. "Best Friend to a Hero." In Harry Potter: Wizard, Myth, Legend , edited by Xenophilius Lovegood, 80-92.

• Example: Weasley, Ron. "Best Friend to a Hero." In Harry Potter: Wizard, Myth, Legend , edited by Xenophilius Lovegood, 80-92. Ottery St. Catchpole: Quibbler Books, 2018.

' Chicago Bibliography Format:

LastName, FirstName. "Title of Essay." In Title of Book or Essay Collection , edited by FirstName LastName, ##-##. Location: Publisher, Year.

• Example: Ron Weasley, "Best Friend to a Hero," in Harry Potter: Wizard, Myth, Legend , edited by Xenophilius Lovegood, 80-92 (Ottery St. Catchpole: Quibbler Books, 2018).
• After the first footnote, use a shortened footnote format that includes only the author's last name, the title of the essay, and the page number or page range where the referenced material appears.

Tip: If you use the Chicago author-date system for in-text citation, use the same in-text citation method as APA style.

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• ↑ https://style.mla.org/essay-in-authored-textbook/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_books.html
• ↑ https://utica.libguides.com/c.php?g=703243&p=4991646
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/c.php?g=27779&p=170363
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ http://libguides.heidelberg.edu/chicago/book/chapter
• ↑ https://librarybestbets.fairfield.edu/citationguides/chicagonotes-bibliography#CollectionofEssays
• ↑ https://libguides.heidelberg.edu/chicago/book/chapter

About This Article

To cite an essay using MLA format, include the name of the author and the page number of the source you’re citing in the in-text citation. For example, if you’re referencing page 123 from a book by John Smith, you would include “(Smith 123)” at the end of the sentence. Alternatively, include the information as part of the sentence, such as “Rathore and Chauhan determined that Himalayan brown bears eat both plants and animals (6652).” Then, make sure that all your in-text citations match the sources in your Works Cited list. For more advice from our Creative Writing reviewer, including how to cite an essay in APA or Chicago Style, keep reading. Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Using Information Sources Ethically and Legally

• Understanding Plagiarism
• Avoidance Tips

When do I need to cite sources?

Does everything need to be cited, all you need to know about citing sources, get help from libraries and writing centers.

Always give credit where credit is due. If the words that you are including in your research belong to someone else, give credit. 

Here is  a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented :  

• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, website, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium  
• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing  
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase  
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials  
• When you reuse or repost any digital media, including images, audio, video, or other media  

There are certain things that  do not need documentation or credit, including :  

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject  
• When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments  
• When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.  
• When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but  not  historical documents)  
• When you are using generally accepted facts (e.g., pollution is bad for the environment) including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities (e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally accepted fact).  

(From Plagiarism FAQs - Purdue Writing Lab )

The following chart from the UT Arlington Library Acknowledging Sources tutorial will guide you in your decision:

What is common knowledge? This refers to facts well known by many people and verifiable in five or more sources. Examples:

• Bill Gates is the founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
• There are 60 minutes in an hour.
• Columbus is the capital of Ohio.
• The whole is greater than the part.
• Common Knowledge inforgraphic

If you have any doubts or questions, ask your professor or librarian. Err on the side of caution: when in doubt, cite!

The online guide Citing Your Sources provides information on citation, style guides, citation tools, and more.

• Ask a Question (UC Libraries form) Email you reference question and get a response within 24 hours.
• Subject librarians Contact a specialist in your discipline.

Writing Centers

• Academic Writing Center (UC Clifton) Trained writing center tutors provide UC students with free writing assistance.

Schedule an appointment

AWC Tutor Feedback (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get  feedback from a tutor within 48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

• UC Clermont Learning Commons Support Services

Email: [email protected]

• UC Blue Ash Writing and Study Skills Center

Submit your work (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get  feedback from a tutor within 24-48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

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A Quick Guide to Referencing | Cite Your Sources Correctly

Referencing means acknowledging the sources you have used in your writing. Including references helps you support your claims and ensures that you avoid plagiarism .

There are many referencing styles, but they usually consist of two things:

• A citation wherever you refer to a source in your text.
• A reference list or bibliography at the end listing full details of all your sources.

The most common method of referencing in UK universities is Harvard style , which uses author-date citations in the text. Our free Harvard Reference Generator automatically creates accurate references in this style.

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Table of contents

Referencing styles, citing your sources with in-text citations, creating your reference list or bibliography, harvard referencing examples, frequently asked questions about referencing.

Each referencing style has different rules for presenting source information. For in-text citations, some use footnotes or endnotes , while others include the author’s surname and date of publication in brackets in the text.

The reference list or bibliography is presented differently in each style, with different rules for things like capitalisation, italics, and quotation marks in references.

Your university will usually tell you which referencing style to use; they may even have their own unique style. Always follow your university’s guidelines, and ask your tutor if you are unsure. The most common styles are summarised below.

Harvard referencing, the most commonly used style at UK universities, uses author–date in-text citations corresponding to an alphabetical bibliography or reference list at the end.

Harvard Referencing Guide

Vancouver referencing, used in biomedicine and other sciences, uses reference numbers in the text corresponding to a numbered reference list at the end.

Vancouver Referencing Guide

APA referencing, used in the social and behavioural sciences, uses author–date in-text citations corresponding to an alphabetical reference list at the end.

APA Referencing Guide APA Reference Generator

MHRA referencing, used in the humanities, uses footnotes in the text with source information, in addition to an alphabetised bibliography at the end.

MHRA Referencing Guide

OSCOLA referencing, used in law, uses footnotes in the text with source information, and an alphabetical bibliography at the end in longer texts.

OSCOLA Referencing Guide

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In-text citations should be used whenever you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source (e.g. a book, article, image, website, or video).

Quoting and paraphrasing

Quoting is when you directly copy some text from a source and enclose it in quotation marks to indicate that it is not your own writing.

Paraphrasing is when you rephrase the original source into your own words. In this case, you don’t use quotation marks, but you still need to include a citation.

In most referencing styles, page numbers are included when you’re quoting or paraphrasing a particular passage. If you are referring to the text as a whole, no page number is needed.

In-text citations

In-text citations are quick references to your sources. In Harvard referencing, you use the author’s surname and the date of publication in brackets.

Up to three authors are included in a Harvard in-text citation. If the source has more than three authors, include the first author followed by ‘ et al. ‘

The point of these citations is to direct your reader to the alphabetised reference list, where you give full information about each source. For example, to find the source cited above, the reader would look under ‘J’ in your reference list to find the title and publication details of the source.

Placement of in-text citations

In-text citations should be placed directly after the quotation or information they refer to, usually before a comma or full stop. If a sentence is supported by multiple sources, you can combine them in one set of brackets, separated by a semicolon.

If you mention the author’s name in the text already, you don’t include it in the citation, and you can place the citation immediately after the name.

• Another researcher warns that the results of this method are ‘inconsistent’ (Singh, 2018, p. 13) .
• Previous research has frequently illustrated the pitfalls of this method (Singh, 2018; Jones, 2016) .
• Singh (2018, p. 13) warns that the results of this method are ‘inconsistent’.

The terms ‘bibliography’ and ‘reference list’ are sometimes used interchangeably. Both refer to a list that contains full information on all the sources cited in your text. Sometimes ‘bibliography’ is used to mean a more extensive list, also containing sources that you consulted but did not cite in the text.

A reference list or bibliography is usually mandatory, since in-text citations typically don’t provide full source information. For styles that already include full source information in footnotes (e.g. OSCOLA and Chicago Style ), the bibliography is optional, although your university may still require you to include one.

Format of the reference list

Reference lists are usually alphabetised by authors’ last names. Each entry in the list appears on a new line, and a hanging indent is applied if an entry extends onto multiple lines.

Different source information is included for different source types. Each style provides detailed guidelines for exactly what information should be included and how it should be presented.

Below are some examples of reference list entries for common source types in Harvard style.

• Chapter of a book
• Journal article

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Your university should tell you which referencing style to follow. If you’re unsure, check with a supervisor. Commonly used styles include:

• Harvard referencing , the most commonly used style in UK universities.
• MHRA , used in humanities subjects.
• APA , used in the social sciences.
• Vancouver , used in biomedicine.
• OSCOLA , used in law.

Your university may have its own referencing style guide.

If you are allowed to choose which style to follow, we recommend Harvard referencing, as it is a straightforward and widely used style.

References should be included in your text whenever you use words, ideas, or information from a source. A source can be anything from a book or journal article to a website or YouTube video.

If you don’t acknowledge your sources, you can get in trouble for plagiarism .

To avoid plagiarism , always include a reference when you use words, ideas or information from a source. This shows that you are not trying to pass the work of others off as your own.

You must also properly quote or paraphrase the source. If you’re not sure whether you’ve done this correctly, you can use the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker to find and correct any mistakes.

Harvard referencing uses an author–date system. Sources are cited by the author’s last name and the publication year in brackets. Each Harvard in-text citation corresponds to an entry in the alphabetised reference list at the end of the paper.

Vancouver referencing uses a numerical system. Sources are cited by a number in parentheses or superscript. Each number corresponds to a full reference at the end of the paper.

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Scribbr APA Citation Checker

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APA Citations 7th Edition

• Why, When, and How to Cite
• General Tips & Sample Reference List
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• Cite Journal, Magazine, Newspaper, and Blog Articles
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• In-Text Citations
• Additional Help

Why to Cite

There are many reasons to cite your sources:

• to give credit to authors or artists whose work you have used
• to allow people who are reviewing your work to check your sources
• to show readers how you came up with your arguments or ideas
• to provide scholars with other sources for their research
• to avoid plagiarism

For more information about the dangers of plagiarism see the APA Blog .

For a quick overview of why  and when  to cite, view this short video, Cite a Source: How and Why You Should Do It .

Test your understanding of plagiarism by taking this short Plagiarism Quiz .

What you don't know CAN hurt you!

When to Cite

Cite a source when:

• you copy information exactly from it; t his includes primary sources, such as when you have interviewed someone or are referring to a work of art or image that you are referencing
• you paraphrase, summarize or use your own words to describe ideas from a work
• you cite statistics, data or other numerical information that was compiled by someone other than yourself.

​ NOTE: The exception to the rule is that you do not have to cite a source when you are using what is considered "common knowledge," such as a date in history, basic biographical facts about a prominent person, or the dates and circumstances of major historical events (e.g. there are 12 months in a year, the planets revolve around the sun, the American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, etc.). If the facts are in dispute, it is best to cite sources.

How to Cite

The essential components of APA citation style are the reference list and related in-text citations. These two components work together to allow readers to find the exact sources used by the writer, as well as where in the paper these sources were used.

The reference list is the master list of all sources used, and is located after the body of the paper. Each source has its own entry on the list and is written in a highly stylized format. The four basic elements of a reference are:

Author. (Date). Title. Source.

For example, here is a citation for an article from a magazine which contains the four basic elements along with additional elements needed to accurately describe a magazine article:

Chesney, R., & Citron, D. (2019, January/February). Deepfakes and the new disinformation war: The coming age of post-truth geopolitics. Foreign Affairs , 98 (1), 147–155.

When sources are used in the body of the paper, in-text citations are the link back to the exact entry for the source appearing on the reference list. For example, when the above source is quoted in the body of the paper it includes an embedded in-text citation:

Chesney (2019) speculates that "as deepfake technology develops and spreads, the current disinformation wars may soon look like the propaganda equivalent of the era of swords and shields."

Kinds of Sources

How to cite a source in the reference list is determined by the kind of source it is. APA citation style organizes sources into reference groups , then categories , and then types . The essential groups /categories / types covered in this guide are:

The one remaining group APA recognizes, "data sets, software, and tests," is not covered in this guide.

For more in-depth information on APA groups / categories / types, with examples, visit this APA Style Blog page .

NOTE: When selecting a group / category / type for a source, what group / category / type a source falls into is of more importance than how it happened to be accessed. For example, if you wanted to cite an article from a journal, when selecting a category/group/type the deciding factor would be that it was an article from a journal, not that you read it in print, or in a library research database, or on a website.  

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MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

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Warning: when you must cite.

Although you should use sources creatively and flexibly to help you generate ideas and sharpen your argument, there are some hard-and-fast rules about the way sources should be acknowledged in your project. Click on the links for more explanation of the various rules.

ALWAYS CITE, in the following cases:

• When you quote two or more words verbatim, or even one word if it is used in a way that is unique to the source. Explanation
• When you introduce facts that you have found in a source. Explanation
• When you paraphrase or summarize ideas, interpretations, or conclusions that you find in a source. For more explanation, see Fair Paraphrase .
• When you introduce information that is not common knowledge or that may be considered common knowledge in your field, but the reader may not know it. For more information, see Common Knowledge .
• When you borrow the plan or structure of a larger section of a source’s argument (for example, using a theory from a source and analyzing the same three case studies that the source uses). Explanation
• When you build on another’s method found either in a source or from collaborative work in a lab.  Explanation
• When you build on another’s program in writing computer code or on a not-commonly-known algorithm. Explanation
• When you collaborate with others in producing knowledge. Explanation

1. When you quote two or more words verbatim, or even one word if it is used in a way that is unique to the source.

Most writers realize that they must acknowledge a source when quoting a memorable phrase or sentence. They’d be sure to credit Mark Twain when quoting: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” And you probably also understand that you do not need to cite words that are very common to your topic. When writing about Hamlet, you do not need to put the words “Hamlet” or “Shakespeare” in quotation marks, or cite a source for them, even though you may have read sources that use these words. But when a single word or two are used in a distinctive way, so that the author is creating a new concept or applying it to a new topic, you must give acknowledge the source. When John Baker redefines the significance of the mirror test by saying that chimpanzees’ awareness of their reflection is not full consciousness, but a limited “kinesthetic self-concept,” it’s clear that those two words, as specialized terms of art, should appear in quotation marks in your paper. Even though neither “kinesthetic” nor “self-concept” is unusual on its own, as a phrase they belong to the author. But even a single, non-specialist term—such as “consilience”—may become tied to an author (in this case, E.O. Wilson) through an influential publication, in which case you should put the single word in quotation marks, at least in your first mention of it in your text.

2. When you introduce facts that you have found in a source.

Facts that are generally accessible (the date of the Declaration of Independence, for instance) need not be cited to a particular source, but once you go up one level of detail on the information ladder, you probably need to cite the source (the number of people who signed the Declaration, for instance). And note that commonly known facts found in a particular or unusual context should be cited, so that the reader knows how your argument may have been influenced by the context in which you found it. For more, see Common Knowledge .

3. When you paraphrase or summarize ideas, interpretations, or conclusions that you find in a source. For more explanation, see Fair Paraphrase .

4. when you introduce information that is not common knowledge or that may be considered common knowledge in your field, but the reader may not know it. for more information, see common knowledge ., 5. when you borrow the plan or structure of a larger section of a source’s argument (for example, using a theory from a source and analyzing the same three case studies that the source uses)..

You may not be used to thinking of the plan of a source as proprietary to its author, but if you follow a source’s plan too closely without acknowledging that you saw it there first, you’re presenting as your own an analysis that someone else shaped. For example, if use Mark Hauser’s discussion of primates’ knowledge of other minds from Wild Minds and you discuss the same three experiments that he analyzes, then you must acknowledge this debt. The simplest way to do this is to say “Like Mark Hauser, I find the three experiments carried out by X, Y, and Z groups to be useful in considering the extent of chimpanzee awareness.” An even better way—because it highlights your distinctiveness as a writer—is to distinguish the different use to which you will put the analysis. If, for instance, you’re focusing on primate social skills rather than strictly on their awareness of other minds, you might write: “Mark Hauser examines three experiments carried out by X, Y, and Z for what they can tell us about knowledge of other minds. For my purposes, though, these same experiments shed important light on the social capacities of primates.” These statements can come in a discursive footnote or in the main body, although if the statement distinguishes your argument from the source’s, it has an important role in the body of the argument.

See Gordon Harvey, Writing With Sources , Chapter 3, for an excellent discussion of unfair borrowing of another’s plan.

6. When you build on another’s method found either in a source or from collaborative work in a lab.

Relying on someone’s research method is like #5 above—borrowing a text’s plan or structure. If your approach to a problem is inspired by someone else’s work on a similar or analogous case, credit the original researcher. Building on the work of others is appropriate and desirable, but methods, like specific words and phrases, are a form of intellectual property.

7. When you build on another’s program or on a not-commonly-known algorithm in writing computer code.

Although writing code may seem different from writing papers, the same standards of acknowledgment apply. If you rely on someone else’s program, you must credit that person. Some software algorithms are so well known that they rise to the level of Common Knowledge . Programmers use such pieces of code without acknowledgement. But if the code is not well known, someone reading your program might think you’ve authored parts that are borrowed. For a useful example of unauthorized code borrowing, see this page of the Princeton University website .

8. When you collaborate with others in producing knowledge.

You may sometimes co-author a paper or other text during college; these opportunities are often more frequent in the professional world. When two or more people all contribute substantially to a piece, they normally list all their names as authors. But there are also occasions when someone gives help that does not rise to the level of co-authorship. If you work with a lab partner to set up an experiment, for instance, but run and analyze the results yourself, you should credit the lab partner in a footnote or by reference within your paper. Similarly, if you and a partner present a scene from a play, and you later write a paper using some of the insights you gained during production, you should credit the other actor.

University life is structured so that your ideas will receive constant testing and refinement in discussion with others. You do not need to cite in your papers every conversation you have about the ideas or evidence. But you do need to develop a judgment about which conversations are incidental and which result in ideas that merit reference in your texts. If you take this warning as an opportunity, and make an effort to reveal the trail of your thinking in footnotes and acknowledgements, you’ll soon develop a sense of how to credit collaboration appropriately.

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Citing Sources

• What Information Should be Cited and Why?
• Intentional & Unintentional Plagiarism
• Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism
• Resources & Help
• APA Style -- 7th edition (2019)
• In-text Citations
• Formatting your Paper
• Works Cited List
• Websites & Web Materials
• Chicago Style

• What are the library hours?
• How do I take materials out of the libraries? To check out materials, go to the front desk (check out desk) at the Library. You'll need your Holy Family ID card.
• How do I access the databases to find articles from off campus? Sign-In using the same log-in as your Canvas account.
• What do I do if full text is not available in a database? Our databases include abstracts (summaries) and selected full text of articles. If the full-text article is not available in one database, it may be available in another. Search the Publication Finder by journal title to see which database includes the full text.
• How can I get items from another library when Holy Family does not have what I need? If we don't have the item that you need in our collection, we can request it for you from another library. Fill out an Interlibrary Loan request form.
• How do I cite in APA, MLA or Chicago style? See our citation guides for examples of citation in various citation styles.
• How does faculty request library instruction for a class?
• If a professor says they have a book on reserve in the Library, what does that mean? Instructors can place items on reserve in the Library for their class using a Library service called "Course Reserve." Click the link for more information regarding this service.

Why Do We Cite Our Research?

Sources of information are cited in order to give the original authors/creators proper credit for their work and to document where an author heard or read the fact or idea that has been incorporated into a new work. The purpose of citations is to let the reader know where you obtained information so sources can easily be located and consulted.

Because knowledge is a cumulative process built on the research and writing of other researchers, your instructor needs to see the quality of the sources you used and how you developed your ideas.

To get started and to see examples, select the citation style from the dropdown menu on the left.

What Information Should Be Cited and Why?

In general, you must document sources when you provide information that you ordinarily would not have known before conducting your research, and when you provide information that it cannot be assumed the reader knows. You must cite a reference when you:

• Discuss, summarize, or paraphrase the ideas of an author
• Provide a direct quotation
• Use statistical or other data
• Use images, graphics, videos, and other media

While you are doing research and locating sources, be sure to document materials thoroughly, noting the author, title, publisher, place of publication, date, and page numbers of all sources used. For electronic materials, you should also note the DOI number (Digital Object Identifier) if available. Note the URL of any website you consult; depending on the source, you may need it for reference.

APA style no longer requires a database name for most references; MLA style still requires it as part of your citation. In either case, make a note of it in case you need to retrieve it at a later date.

Common Knowledge

Things that are common knowledge do not require citation. For example:

• Social networking sites such as Facebook allow people to communicate easily regardless of their location. (does not require citation)
• The Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. (does not require citation)

However, if someone draws an original conclusion from a common fact, then you must cite the source:

• The ability to share real-time news and video with the world via social networking sites has emboldened student movements in countries where there is very little freedom of the press. (requires citation)
• Japan's failure to sink any U.S. aircraft carriers in the otherwise devastating attack on Pearl Harbor assured Japan's eventual defeat. (requires citation)

Also, common sayings or proverbs need not be cited:

• "The early bird gets the worm." (common expression with no distinct origin)

Below is a famous saying you might recognize, but it's actually from a poem by Sir Walter Scott. If you read this in a book, of course, you would cite the book. If you already knew this expression, you should still give Sir Walter Scott credit for it because it has a distinct and identifiable origin.

• "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

Getting started

We understand that citing your sources can be a little confusing, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Before you start, ask yourself these questions:

1. What type of source am I trying to cite?

• Journal article? Book? Webpage?

2. Where did I retrieve that source?

• Library database? Website? Was it a print source?

3. What citation style am I supposed to use for my assignment?

Once you've answered these questions, select the most appropriate option from either the  APA  or  MLA  dropdown menu.

To request a one-on-one consultation with a librarian to begin research on a paper, find sources, or review the APA/MLA formatting of their paper and/or references please make an appointment with us through our online web form . We offer both online and in-person options

• Next: Academic Honesty & Plagiarism >>
• Last Updated: Mar 6, 2024 3:24 PM
• URL: https://holyfamily.libguides.com/citingsources

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8-How to Cite Sources

4. When to Cite

Citing sources is often described as a straightforward, rule-based practice. But in fact, there are many gray areas around citation, and learning how to apply citation guidelines takes practice and education. If you are confused by it, you are not alone – in fact you might be doing some good thinking. Here are some guidelines to help you navigate citation practices.

Cite when you are directly quoting. This is the easiest rule to understand. If you are stating word-for-word what someone else has already written, you must put quotes around those words and you must give credit to the original author. Not doing so would mean that you are letting your reader believe these words are your own and represent your own effort.

Cite when you are summarizing and paraphrasing. This is a trickier area to understand. First of all, summarizing and paraphrasing are two related practices but they are not the same. Summarizing is when you read a text, consider the main points, and provide a shorter version of what you learned. Paraphrasing is when you restate what the original author said in your own words and in your own tone. Both summarizing and paraphrasing require good writing skills and an accurate understanding of the material you are trying to convey. Summarizing and paraphrasing are difficult to do when you are a beginning academic researcher, but these skills become easier to perform over time with practice.

Cite when you are citing something that is highly debatable. For example, if you want to claim that the Patriot Act has been an important tool for national security, you should be prepared to give examples of how it has helped and how experts have claimed that it has helped. Many U.S. citizens concerned that it violates privacy rights won’t agree with you, and they will be able to find commentary that the Patriot Act has been more harmful to the nation than helpful. You need to be prepared to show such skeptics that you have experts on your side, too.

Tip: Why Cite Sources?

This section covers how and when to cite sources. For a discussion of why to cite sources, see Ethical Use of Sources .

When Don’t You Cite?

Don’t cite when what you are saying is your own insight. As you learned in  The Purpose of Academic Argument , research involves forming opinions and insights around what you learn. You may be citing several sources that have helped you learn, but at some point you must integrate your own opinion, conclusion, or insight into the work. The fact that you are not citing it helps the reader understand that this portion of the work is your unique contribution developed through your own research efforts.

Don’t cite when you are stating common knowledge. What is common knowledge is sometimes difficult to discern. In general, quick facts like historical dates or events are not cited because they are common knowledge.

Examples of information that would not need to be cited include:

• The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.
• Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States in January, 2009.

Some quick facts, such as statistics, are trickier. For example, the number of gun-related deaths per year probably should be cited, because there are a lot of ways this number could be determined (does the number include murder only, or suicides and accidents, as well?) and there might be different numbers provided by different organizations, each with an agenda about gun laws.

A guideline that can help with deciding whether or not to cite facts is to determine whether the same data is repeated in multiple sources. If it is not, it is best to cite.

The other thing that makes this determination difficult might be that what seems new and insightful to you might be common knowledge to an expert in the field. You have to use your best judgment, and probably err on the side of over-citing, as you are learning to do academic research. You can seek the advice of your instructor, a writing tutor, or a librarian. Knowing what is and is not common knowledge is a practiced skill that gets easier with time and with your own increased knowledge.

Tip: Why You Can’t Cite Wikipedia

You’ve likely been told at some point that you can’t cite Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia for that matter, in your scholarly work.

The reason is that such entries are meant to prepare you to do research, not be evidence of your having done it. Wikipedia entries, which are tertiary sources, are already a summary of what is known about the topic. Someone else has already done the labor of synthesizing lots of information into a concise and quick way of learning about the topic.

So while Wikipedia is a great shortcut for getting context, background, and a quick lesson on topics that might not be familiar to you, don’t quote, paraphrase, or summarize from it. Just use it to educate yourself.

Activity: To Cite or Not to Cite?

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Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / Citation Basics / Citing Evidence

Citing Evidence

In this article, you will learn how to cite the most relevant evidence for your audience.

Writing for a specific audience is an important skill. What you present in your writing and how you present it will vary depending on your intended audience.

Sometimes, you have to judge your audience’s level of understanding. For example, a general audience may not have as much background knowledge as an academic audience.

The UNC Writing Center provides a general overview of questions about your audience that you should consider. Click here and read the section, “How do I identify my audience and what they want from me?”

Addressing Audience Bias

In addition to knowledge, values, and concerns, your audience may also hold certain biases , or judgments and prejudices, about a topic.

Take, for example, the topic of the Revolutionary War. Your intended audience may be British economists who see the American Revolution as a rebellion, which hindered British imperialism around the world.

When writing for this audience, you still want to present your claims, reasoning, and evidence to support your argument about the American Revolution, but you don’t want to alienate your British audience. You will need to be sensitive in how you explain American success and its impact on the British Empire.

Quotes, Paraphrases & Audience

Using quotes and paraphrases is a terrific way to both support your argument and make it interesting for the audience to read. You should tailor the use of these quotes and paraphrases to your audience.

Evidence Sources & Audience

Whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing, the source of your evidence matters to your audience . Readers want to see credible sources that they trust.

For example, military historians may feel reassured to see citations from the Journal of Military History (the refereed academic publication for the Society for Military History) in your writing about the American Revolution.

They may be less persuaded by a quote from a historical reenactor’s blog or a more general source like The History Channel . Historical fiction or historical films created for entertainment likely will not impress them at all, unless you are creating a critique of those sources.

It can sometimes be helpful to create an annotated bibliography before writing your paper since the annotations you write will help you to summarize and evaluate the relevance and/or credibility of each of your sources.

Quoting/Paraphrasing with Audience in Mind

Choosing ­ when to use quotes or paraphrases can depend on your audience as well.

If your audience wants details, if you want to grab the attention of your audience, or if audience bias may prevent acceptance of a more generalized statement, use a quote.

If your audience is new to the topic or a more general audience, if they will want to see your conclusions presented quickly, or if a quote would disrupt the reading of your text, a paraphrase is better.

Using Quotes and Paraphrases Effectively: Example

John Luzader, who has worked with the Department of Defense and the National Park Service, can be considered an expert who understands the technical aspects of military history.

Click here to read his “Thoughts on the Battle of Saratoga.” As you read, consider whether you would quote or paraphrase this text when using it as evidence for a school newspaper article explaining why the British surrendered.

Quotes and Paraphrases Example: Explained

A high school newspaper’s audience is usually intelligent and informed but not expert. Unless it is a military academy’s newspaper, it is unlikely that the audience has enough expertise to understand specific technical terms like “redoubt,” “intervisual,” or “British right and rear.”

For this audience, Luzader’s Thoughts on the Battle of Saratoga would work better as a paraphrase:

Military historian John Luzader (2010) argues that the British position on the field at Saratoga allowed the Americans to take the earthwork fort that protected the Redcoats and form a circle around the British, forcing their defeat.

Notice that the above paraphrase uses an in-text citation, which all paraphrases should. Because Luzader’s name is included in the sentence, we only need the year of publication (2010) in parentheses.

Relevant Evidence for Claims and Counterclaims

As a writer, you need to supply the most relevant evidence for claims and counterclaims based on what you know about your audience. Your claim is your position on the subject, while a counterclaim is a point that someone with an opposing view may raise.

Pointing out the strengths and limitations of your evidence in a way that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases helps you select the best evidence for your readers.

Relevant Evidence for Counterclaims: Example

Your audience’s concerns may include a counterclaim you must address. For example, your readers may think that the American Revolution cannot be considered a world war because it was a fight between one country and its colonies.

You should acknowledge these differences in beliefs with evidence, but be sure to return to your original claim, emphasizing why it is correct. Your acknowledgment may look like this (the counterclaim is in italics):

Although the American Revolution was primarily a battle between the British empire and its rebellious North American colonies , the foreign alliances made during the American Revolution helped the colonists survive the war and become a nation. The French Alliance of 1778 shows how foreign intervention was necessary to keep the United States going. As Office of the Historian for the U.S. State Department (2017) explains, “The single most important diplomatic success of the colonists during the War for Independence was the critical link they forged with France.” These alliances with other nations, who provided financial and military support to the colonists, expanded the scope of the Revolution to the point of being a world war.

Now you know how to select the best evidence to include in your writing! Remember to consider your audience, address counterclaims while not straying from your own claim, and use in-text citations for quotes and paraphrases.

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Using Sources Correctly

Crediting and Citing Your Sources

Now that you’ve just summarized or paraphrased or directly quoted a source, is there anything else you need to do with that source? Well, it turns out there is. There are some standard ways of using sources that let your readers know this material is from other texts rather than original ideas from your own brain. Following these guidelines also allows us, your readers, to locate those sources if we are interested in the topic and would like to know more about what they say.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Giving credit to the sources you used creating a text is important (and useful!) for several reasons.

• It adds to your own credibility as an author by showing you have done appropriate research on your topic and approached your work ethically.
• It gives credit to the original author and their work for the ideas you found to be useful, and in giving them credit it helps you avoid unintentionally plagiarizing their work.
• It gives your readers additional resources (already curated by you in your research process!) that they can go to if they want to read further your topic.

What Does It Mean to Credit or Cite Your Sources?

For college-level work, this generally means two things: in-text or parenthetical citation and a “Works Cited” or “References” page. What these two things look like will be a little different for different types of classes (for example, it’s likely your writing class will use MLA—Modern Language Association—format, while a psychology class is more likely to use APA—American Psychological Association—format). The specific details required and the order in which they appear changes a little between different formats, but practicing one of them will give you a general idea of what most of them are looking for. All of the information we are looking at here is specific to MLA, which is the format you will use for your writing classes (and some other humanities classes).

Citing: Identifying In-Text Sources

Once you have brought source material into your writing (via quotation, summary, or paraphrase), your next task is to cite or identify it. This is essential because giving credit to the creator of the source material helps you avoid plagiarism. Identifying your sources also helps your reader understand which written content is from a source and which represents your ideas.

When you cite or identify source materials, you make it absolutely clear that the material was taken from a source. Note that if you don’t do that, your reader is left to assume the words are yours—and since that isn’t true, you will have committed plagiarism.

In-Text Citation

Every time you use an idea or language from a source in your text (so every time you summarize, paraphrase, or directly quote material from a source), you will want to add an in-text citation. Sometimes you can accomplish this simply by mentioning the author or title of a source in the body of your writing, but other times you’ll handle in-text citation differently, with a parenthetical citation. Parenthetical means that the citation appears in parentheses in the text of your essay.

A starting point for parenthetical citations is that they include the author’s last name and the page number where the borrowed information came from. For example, let’s say I’m using material from an article written by Lisa Smith. It’s in a physical magazine and spans pages 38-42. If, on page 41, she says something like, “While most studies have shown that Expo dry erase markers have superior lasting power, erasability, and color saturation than other brands on the market, their higher cost is a concern for some consumers,” I might incorporate that into a paper like this:

By most measurable standards, Expo markers are clearly the favored option (Smith 41).

However, you don’t always need both components (last name and page number) in the parenthetical citation. If I introduced the source material in the sentence above a little differently, introducing the author before delivering the material, I wouldn’t need to repeat the author’s name in that same sentence in the parenthetical citation. In that case, my sentence would look something like this: According to Lisa Smith, Expo markers are clearly the favored option by most measurable standards (41).

In this section, we’ll discuss three ways to cite or identify written source materials in your own writing.

1. Introduce the Author and/or the Title of the Source

By introducing the author or the material, you make it clear to the reader that what you’re talking about is from a source. Here’s an example of a quotation that is identified by introducing the author and the title of source (which are highlighted):

In the article, “Grooming Poodles for Fun and Profit,” Jonas Fogbottom explains , “Poodle grooming is a labor of love. It takes years of practice to be good at it, but once learned, it’s a fun and worthwhile career.”

Here’s an example of a paraphrase that is identified in the same way:

In the article, “Grooming Poodles for Fun and Profit,” Jonas Fogbottom says that although it takes a long time to become a skilled poodle groomer, it’s well worth the effort and leads to a good career.

Note that, in the example above, (1) if there are no page numbers to cite and (2) if the name of the author is signaled in the phrase that introduces the bit of source material, then there is no need for the parenthetical citation. This is an example of a situation where mentioning the author by name is the only in-text citation you’ll need. And sometimes, if the name of the author is unknown, then you might just mention the title of the article instead. It will be up to you, as a writer, to choose which method works best for your given situation.

The first time that you mention a source in your writing, you should always introduce the speaker and, if possible, the title of the source as well. Note that the speaker is the person responsible for stating the information that you’re citing and that this is not always the author of the text. For example, an author of an article might quote someone else, and you might quote or paraphrase that person.

Use the speaker’s full name (e.g. “According to Jonas Fogbottom . . .”) the first time you introduce them; if you mention them again in the paper, use their last name only (e.g. “Fogbottom goes on to discuss . . .”).

2. Use Linking or Attributive Language

Using linking language (sometimes called attributive language or signal phrases) simply means using words that show the reader you are still talking about a source that you just mentioned.

For example, you might use linking language that looks something like this:

• The author also explains . . .
• Fogbottom continues . . .
• The article goes on to say . . .
• The data set also demonstrates . . .

By using this kind of language, you make it clear to the reader that you’re still talking about a source. And while you’ll use this type of language throughout any researched essay whether you’re also using parenthetical citations or not, as we mentioned above, sometimes this linking language will be all you need for in-text citation.

Let’s look back at the last Fogbottom example from above, and imagine you wanted to add two more sentences from the same source. The linking language is highlighted :

In the article, “Grooming Poodles for Fun and Profit,” Jonas Fogbottom says that although it takes a long time to become a skilled poodle groomer, it’s well worth the effort and leads to a good career. Fogbottom goes on to explain how one is trained in the art of dog and poodle grooming. The article also gives a set of resources for people who want to know more about a dog grooming career.

Using the linking language makes it absolutely clear to your reader that you are still talking about a source.

3. Use a Parenthetical Citation

A parenthetical citation is a citation enclosed within parentheses.

The classic parenthetical citation includes the author’s name and, if there is one, a page number. To learn more about parenthetical citation and see some examples, see the Purdue OWL article on “ MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics ” (available from owl.english.purdue.edu).

Here’s an example :

(Fogbottom 16)

If there are two authors , list both (with a page number, if available):

(Smith and Jones 24)

If there are three or more authors , list the first author only and add “et al.”* (with a page number, if available):

(Smith et al. 62)

* et al means “and others.” If a text or source has three or more authors, MLA style has us just list the first one with et al .

But my source doesn’t have page numbers!

If you are using an electronic source or another kind of source with no page numbers, just leave the page number out:

(Fogbottom)

If you’re quoting or paraphrasing someone who was cited by the author of one of your sources , then that’s handled a bit differently. For example, what if you quote Smith, but you found that quote in the article by Fogbottom. In this case, you should introduce the speaker (Smith) as described above, and then cite the source for the quote, like this:

(qtd. in Fogbottom)

But my source doesn’t have an author!

This happens sometimes. Many useful documents, like government publications, organizational reports, and surveys, don’t list their authors. On the other hand, sometimes no clearly listed author can be a red flag that a source is not entirely trustworthy or is not researched well enough to be a reliable source for you.

If you encounter a source with no author, do look for other indicators that it is a good (or poor) source—who published it, does it have an appropriate list of references, is it current information, is it unbiased?

If you determine that this source is an appropriate source to use, then, when you create your in-text citation for it, you will simply use the title of the source (article, chapter, graph, film, etc.) in the place where you would have used the author’s name. If the title is long, you should abbreviate by listing the first one or two words of it (with a page number, if available).

Let’s imagine you’re working with a newspaper article entitled, “What’s New in Technology,” enclosed in quotation marks to indicate that this is an article title, and with no known author . Here’s what that would look in a parenthetical citation:

(“What’s New” B6)

If there is no author and you’re working with an electronic article, use the first one or two words in your parenthetical citation, again, enclosed in quotation marks. Let’s imagine you’re working with a web article entitled, “Pie Baking for Fun and Profit” and with no author. Here’s what that would look in a parenthetical citation:

(“Pie Baking”)

The parenthetical citation should be added at the end of the sentence that contains the source material. Let’s go back to the Fogbottom example and see how a parenthetical citation would work:

“Poodle grooming is a labor of love. It takes years of practice to be good at it, but once learned, it’s a fun and worthwhile career” (Fogbottom).

Here’s what it would look like if we used it with a paraphrase instead of a quotation:

Although it takes a long time to become a skilled poodle groomer, it’s well worth the effort and leads to a good career (Fogbottom).

Note that the citation is placed at the end of the sentence; the period comes after the parentheses. Misplacing the period is one of the most common formatting errors made by students.

Using parenthetical citation makes it crystal clear that a sentence comes from source material. This is, by far, the easiest way to cite or identify your source materials, too.

If using parenthetical citations is easy, why would we bother with using introduction or linking language to identify sources?

Good question! There would be nothing wrong with only using parenthetical citations all the way through your writing—it would absolutely do the job of citing the material. But, it wouldn’t read smoothly and would feel somewhat rough because every time a parenthetical citation popped up, the reader would be “stopped” in place for a moment. Using a combination of introduction, linking language, and parenthetical citation, as needed, makes the writing smoother and easier to read. It also integrates the source material with the writer’s ideas. We call this synthesis, and it’s part of the craft of writing.

Works Cited Entries

At the end of texts that have drawn from existing sources, you will often find a Works Cited page. This page gives more information than the parenthetical citations do about what kinds of sources were referenced in this work and where they can be found if the reader would like to know more about them. These entries all follow a specific and consistent format so that it is easy for readers to find the information they are looking for and so the shape and type of that information is consistent no matter who is writing the entries.

Until recently, the MLA required a slightly different format for every type of source—an entry for a Youtube video required certain information that was different from an entry for a book that was different from an entry for an online article. The most recent version of MLA, though—MLA 8—has simplified this so there is just one format rather than many.

You can learn how to create works cited entries in MLA 8 format, and see an example, in the “ Creating a Works Cited Page ” appendix to this text.

The Word on College Reading and Writing Copyright © by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A Guide to Referencing your Work

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How to Cite a Fact Sheet Using the MLA Style of Writing

If you want an overview of a topic, a fact sheet provides the key points. Many types of organizations, including government agencies, colleges and corporations, offer these documents. The seventh edition of the "MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers" presents guidelines for citing fact sheets both in text and on the Works Cited page.

In-text Citation

After discussing information from a fact sheet, include an in-text citation within parentheses. List the author's last name if one is identified or the organization's name, for example: (Office of Management and Budget). If the author's name is mentioned in the text of the se, omit it from the parentheses.

Works Cited Page

To include a citation of a fact sheet on the Works Cited page, begin with the author's name. If it is an individual, list last name, a comma and first name. Add a period. Put the title of the document and a period in quotation marks. Insert "Fact sheet" without quotation marks. Add a period. Identify the organization connected to the fact sheet. Add a period and list the location of the organization. Add a period. Include the date of the fact sheet. If no date is listed, use "n.d." without quotation marks. Describe the medium of the document, such as "Print" or Web" without quotation marks, and end with a period. An example of a fact sheet citation:

Office of Management and Budget. "Building a 21st Century Infrastructure." Fact sheet. The White House. Washington, D.C. n.d. Web.

• Skyline College: MLA Citation Style
• Purdue OWL: MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics
• Office of Management and Budget: Building a 21st Century Infrastructure

Living in upstate New York, Susan Sherwood is a researcher who has been writing within educational settings for more than 10 years. She has co-authored papers for Horizons Research, Inc. and the Capital Region Science Education Partnership. Sherwood has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University at Albany.

How to Cite Statistics

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If you’re quoting or referring to statistics in your academic papers, the short and simple answer is, yes, of course, you should always cite your sources. This will allow your reader—usually your lecturer—to check the statistic for themselves with a clear point of reference for reviewing the relevant study in more detail if they wish.

But What If It’s Common Knowledge?

Even if you’re referring to something that’s often quoted and could be considered common knowledge—for example, that 50% of marriages end in divorce, or that 80% of businesses fail in their first year—you should still back this up by quoting a study from a reputable source. You might even find that your “common knowledge” statistic isn’t as reliable as you originally thought.

So How Do I Cite a Statistic?

Assuming that you’ve found a reliable source for the statistic that you’re quoting or referring to, you now need to create a citation to point to that source. How you do this will depend on the citation format that you’re required to use and the actual source type of the statistic. Once you know whether you’re expected to cite your sources in MLA or APA style , citing a statistic is essentially no different from citing anything else from that particular type of source.

For example, if you took the statistic from a website, you cite it as you would any other website. The same goes for statistics found in books, journals, magazines, or databases—simply follow the usual citation method for each source.

Here is an example of a statistic found online and cited in MLA style (9 th Edition)

Full Citation Structure

Author’s last name, First name. “Title of Document/Webpage: Subtitle.” Title of Website, Publisher/Affiliated organization, Date published, URL.

More females than males attended college/university in the US in 2017.

Full Citation in Works Cited List

“Table 105.20: Enrollment in Elementary, Secondary, and Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions, by Level and Control of Institution, Enrollment Level, and Attendance Status and Sex of Student: Selected Years, Fall 1990 through Fall 2026.” Digest of Education Statistics , National Center for Education Statistics, February 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_105.20.asp?current=yes.

Note the above example does not have author information available, so the citation starts with the title of the document. Also, the citation provides information for an individual data table on a webpage, rather than simply the webpage itself.

In-text Citation

An in-text citation in MLA is a parenthetical citation . The standard format for this citation is:

(Author, page number)

Creating an in-text citation for a webpage can be tricky due to the absence of page numbers (and, in this case, the absence of an author). The advice for MLA format is to include the first item of your full citation, whatever that may be. This will enable the reader to easily identify the full citation, which is, of course, the point of an in-text citation. You can condense the item if necessary.

So, for the above example, the in-text citation would be:

(“Table 105.20”)

That Seems Like A Lot of Information!

Generally, the more information you can give on a resource the better—so if it’s available, include it. However, it’s understood that sometimes you might have to leave some components out. If you follow the format as instructed by your lecturer and include enough information to enable them to find your sources, your citation should be correct.

Remember! Don’t rely on “common knowledge” to cite statistics. Your lecturer will want to see firm sources to validate those statistics. Citation Machine can help with quick citation creation, making it easy to back up those statistics with properly referenced sources. There are thousands of styles including the Chicago Manual of Style and many others.

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• How to Cite a Website | MLA, APA & Chicago Examples

How to Cite a Website | MLA, APA & Chicago Examples

Published on March 5, 2021 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on January 17, 2024.

To cite a page from a website, you need a short in-text citation and a corresponding reference stating the author’s name, the date of publication, the title of the page, the website name, and the URL.

This information is presented differently in different citation styles. APA , MLA , and Chicago are the most commonly used styles.

Use the interactive example generator below to explore APA and MLA website citations.

Note that the format is slightly different for citing YouTube and other online video platforms, or for citing an image .

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Table of contents

Citing a website in mla style, citing a website in apa style, citing a website in chicago style, frequently asked questions about citations.

An MLA Works Cited entry for a webpage lists the author’s name , the title of the page (in quotation marks), the name of the site (in italics), the date of publication, and the URL.

The in-text citation usually just lists the author’s name. For a long page, you may specify a (shortened) section heading to locate the specific passage. Don’t use paragraph numbers unless they’re specifically numbered on the page.

The same format is used for blog posts and online articles from newspapers and magazines.

You can also use our free MLA Citation Generator to generate your website citations.

Generate accurate MLA citations with Scribbr

Citing a whole website.

When you cite an entire website rather than a specific page, include the author if one can be identified for the whole site (e.g. for a single-authored blog). Otherwise, just start with the site name.

List the copyright date displayed on the site; if there isn’t one, provide an access date after the URL.

Webpages with no author or date

When no author is listed, cite the organization as author only if it differs from the website name.

If the organization name is also the website name, start the Works Cited entry with the title instead, and use a shortened version of the title in the in-text citation.

When no publication date is listed, leave it out and include an access date at the end instead.

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An APA reference for a webpage lists the author’s last name and initials, the full date of publication, the title of the page (in italics), the website name (in plain text), and the URL.

The in-text citation lists the author’s last name and the year. If it’s a long page, you may include a locator to identify the quote or paraphrase (e.g. a paragraph number and/or section title).

Note that a general reference to an entire website doesn’t require a citation in APA Style; just include the URL in parentheses after you mention the site.

You can also use our free APA Citation Generator to create your webpage citations. Search for a URL to retrieve the details.

Generate accurate APA citations with Scribbr

Blog posts and online articles.

Blog posts follow a slightly different format: the title of the post is not italicized, and the name of the blog is.

The same format is used for online newspaper and magazine articles—but not for articles from news sites like Reuters and BBC News (see the previous example).

When a page has no author specified, list the name of the organization that created it instead (and omit it later if it’s the same as the website name).

When it doesn’t list a date of publication, use “n.d.” in place of the date. You can also include an access date if the page seems likely to change over time.

In Chicago notes and bibliography style, footnotes are used to cite sources. They refer to a bibliography at the end that lists all your sources in full.

A Chicago bibliography entry for a website lists the author’s name, the page title (in quotation marks), the website name, the publication date, and the URL.

Chicago also has an alternative author-date citation style . Examples of website citations in this style can be found here .

For blog posts and online articles from newspapers, the name of the publication is italicized. For a blog post, you should also add the word “blog” in parentheses, unless it’s already part of the blog’s name.

When a web source doesn’t list an author , you can usually begin your bibliography entry and short note with the name of the organization responsible. Don’t repeat it later if it’s also the name of the website. A full note should begin with the title instead.

When no publication or revision date is shown, include an access date instead in your bibliography entry.

The main elements included in website citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the author, the date of publication, the page title, the website name, and the URL. The information is presented differently in each style.

In APA , MLA , and Chicago style citations for sources that don’t list a specific author (e.g. many websites ), you can usually list the organization responsible for the source as the author.

If the organization is the same as the website or publisher, you shouldn’t repeat it twice in your reference:

• In APA and Chicago, omit the website or publisher name later in the reference.
• In MLA, omit the author element at the start of the reference, and cite the source title instead.

If there’s no appropriate organization to list as author, you will usually have to begin the citation and reference entry with the title of the source instead.

When you want to cite a specific passage in a source without page numbers (e.g. an e-book or website ), all the main citation styles recommend using an alternate locator in your in-text citation . You might use a heading or chapter number, e.g. (Smith, 2016, ch. 1)

In APA Style , you can count the paragraph numbers in a text to identify a location by paragraph number. MLA and Chicago recommend that you only use paragraph numbers if they’re explicitly marked in the text.

For audiovisual sources (e.g. videos ), all styles recommend using a timestamp to show a specific point in the video when relevant.

Check if your university or course guidelines specify which citation style to use. If the choice is left up to you, consider which style is most commonly used in your field.

• APA Style is the most popular citation style, widely used in the social and behavioral sciences.
• MLA style is the second most popular, used mainly in the humanities.
• Chicago notes and bibliography style is also popular in the humanities, especially history.
• Chicago author-date style tends to be used in the sciences.

Other more specialized styles exist for certain fields, such as Bluebook and OSCOLA for law.

The most important thing is to choose one style and use it consistently throughout your text.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2024, January 17). How to Cite a Website | MLA, APA & Chicago Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/cite-a-website/

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How A.I. Chatbots Become Political

By Zvi Mowshowitz Graphics by Sara Chodosh

Mr. Mowshowitz writes a newsletter about artificial intelligence.

We increasingly rely on artificial intelligence chatbots as tools to understand the world. Some are already replacing internet search engines and aiding in other tasks like writing and programming. Keeping an eye on chatbots’ emergent behaviors — including their political attitudes — is becoming more and more important.

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Political preferences are often summarized on two axes. The horizontal axis represents left versus right, dealing with economic issues like taxation and spending, the social safety net, health care and environmental protections. The vertical axis is libertarian versus authoritarian. It measures attitudes toward civil rights and liberties, traditional morality, immigration and law enforcement.

You can try out a short quiz for yourself to see how your views compare with the A.I. models’ answers in Mr. Rozado’s study.

Are you progressive? Conservative? Libertarian? Authoritarian?

Take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz to find out — it’s only 10 questions.

Source: The Advocates for Self-Government

Access to open-source versions of A.I. models allows us to see how a model’s political preferences develop. During the initial base training phase, most models land close to the political center on both axes, as they initially ingest huge amounts of training data — more or less everything A.I. companies can get their hands on — drawing from across the political spectrum.

Models then undergo a second phase called fine-tuning. It makes the model a better chat partner, training it to have maximally pleasant and helpful conversations while refraining from causing offense or harm, like outputting pornography or providing instructions for building weapons.

Companies use different fine-tuning methods, but they’re generally a hands-on process that offers greater opportunity for individual decisions by the workers involved to shape the direction of the models. At this point, more significant differences emerge in the political preferences of the A.I. systems.

In Mr. Rozado’s study, after fine-tuning, the distribution of the political preferences of A.I. models followed a bell curve, with the center shifted to the left. None of the models tested became extreme, but almost all favored left-wing views over right-wing ones and tended toward libertarianism rather than authoritarianism.

Source: Rozado (2024), The Political Preferences of LLMs

What determines the political preferences of your A.I. chatbot? Are model fine-tuners pushing their own agendas? How do these differences shape the A.I.’s answers, and how do they go on to shape our opinions?

Conservatives complain that many commercially available A.I. bots exhibit a persistent liberal bias. Elon Musk built Grok as an alternative language model after grumbling about ChatGPT being a “woke” A.I. — a line he has also used to insult Google’s Gemini.

Liberals notice that A.I. output is often — in every sense — insufficiently diverse, because models learn from correlations and biases in training data, overrepresenting the statistically most likely results. Unless actively mitigated, this will perpetuate discrimination and tend to erase minority groups from A.I.-generated content.

But our A.I. systems are still largely inscrutable black boxes, which makes herding them difficult. What we get out of them broadly reflects what we have put in, but no one can predict exactly how. So we observe the results, tinker and try again.

To the extent that anyone has attempted to steer this process beyond avoiding extreme views, those attempts appear unsuccessful. For example, when three Meta models were evaluated by Mr. Rozado, one tested as being Establishment Liberal, another Ambivalent Right. One OpenAI model tested as Establishment Liberal and the other was Outsider Left. Grok’s “fun mode” turns out to be a Democratic Mainstay, more liberal than the median model.

Google’s Gemini Advanced, released after Mr. Rozado’s paper, appears to be farthest to the left, but in a way that presumably well overshot its creators’ intentions, reflecting another unsuccessful steering attempt.

These preferences represent a type of broad cultural power. We fine-tune models primarily by giving potential responses thumbs up or thumbs down. Every time we do, we train the A.I. to reflect a particular set of cultural values. Currently, the values trained into A.I. are those that tech companies believe will produce broadly acceptable, inoffensive content that our political and media institutions will view as balanced.

The results do not lie at the center of our national politics. Many of the motivating ideas and forces in American political thought, regardless of what you may think of them, would be seen as unacceptable for an A.I. to articulate.

A modestly left-leaning, modestly libertarian orientation feels “normal.” So does a left-leaning interpretation of what is and is not settled science, unreliable sourcing or what constitutes misinformation. Political preferences learned from those topics may then be broadly applied across the board to many other subjects as well.

If one wants to steer this process directionally, Mr. Rozado proves it is straightforward to do. He started with GPT-3.5-Turbo and rapidly created models he called LeftWingGPT and RightWingGPT (at a total training cost of about $2,000) by feeding the model a steady diet of partisan sources. For example, RightWingGPT read National Review, while LeftWingGPT read The New Yorker.

The resulting models were far more politically extreme than any publicly available model tested by Mr. Rozado. (He did not test Gemini Advanced.)

Commercial forces will pressure companies to first make chatbots be generally inoffensive and noncontroversial, and then to give their customers what they want. YouTube, Facebook and others have learned that serving up an endless stream of personalized, unchallenging content is good for business. Future A.I. chatbots will have more context about what their users are looking for and will use that context to give it to them, both out of the box and through tools like custom instructions and fine-tuning.

See how differently LeftWingGPT and RightWingGPT answer the same question

LeftWingGPT

RightWingGPT

Note: Each model was asked to answer in three sentences each time in order to keep the answers succinct.

With A.I. models, we have two opposing risks to worry about. We may have individually customized A.I.s telling us what we want to hear. Or we may increasingly hear a particular perspective favored over others, infusing that single point of view deeply into our lives while rendering conflicting thoughts harder to even consider in the first place.

In the near future, we will turn language models into agents that work toward our goals: My A.I. will talk to or negotiate with your A.I. We will outsource increasingly complex tasks to our A.I.s. It will become easier to let them make choices on our behalf and determine what information we see. As we turn over more of our decision-making to A.I.s and lose track of the details, their values could start to override our values.

We must ensure that we are shaping and commanding the more capable A.I.s of the coming years, rather than letting them shape and command us. The critical first step in making that possible is to enact legislation requiring visibility into the training of any new A.I. model that potentially approaches or exceeds the state of the art. Mandatory oversight of cutting-edge models will not solve the underlying problem, but it will be necessary in order to make finding a future solution possible.

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