Furnishing readers with information about the materials you have used in your work is a necessary part of all research. Documenting your sources is more than a matter of courtesy; it is an ethical and legal requirement. By carefully documenting your work, you will avoid being accused of plagiarism (presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own).

The Whys and Hows of Documentation
Documentation is important for three reasons: (1) It demonstrates to your readers that you have done your homework. (2) It provides proper credit to the other authors you have relied on in your research. (3) It gives readers sufficient information about the materials you have used so that they can find those sources themselves.

Any direct quotation—even a single word—must be documented. You must also document any paraphrase or summary of another individual's words, whether written or from an oral report. You must document any opinions, expressed verbally or in writing, that are not your own, as well as any statistical data, visuals, and software you did not compile or develop yourself. In addition, you must never present work done collaboratively as your own.

Do not document obvious facts, well-known dates, historical information, mathematical or chemical formulas, or proverbs.

Parenthetical Versus Footnote Documentation
Parenthetical documentation is the method advocated by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). In the parenthetical method, the writer tells readers right in the text what references are being cited. In MLA style, for example, the last name of a quoted or summarized author is added in parentheses right after the quote or summary of his or her work, together with the page numbers in the original source where that quote or information can be found. When a writer documents using footnotes or endnotes, by contrast, he or she inserts a superscript number after the quote or paraphrase and provides the bibliographic information in a correspondingly numbered footnote (at the bottom of the page) or endnote (in a list at the end of the paper).

Preparing the Works Cited Page
Even though the list of references goes at the end of your paper in parenthetical style, prepare your Works Cited list before you start to document. By preparing the list first, you will know what sources you must cite and what page numbers you must list, and you will avoid accidentally omitting a source.

When you prepare a Works Cited list in MLA style, include this information, in this order:

Books		Articles
Author(s) or editor(s)		Author(s)
Title (underscored or in italics)		Title of article (in quotation marks)
Edition (if second or subsequent)		Name of journal (underscored or in italics)
Place of publication		Volume number (in arabic numerals)
Publisher's name		Date of publication
Date of publication		Page number(s)

The order and formatting vary slightly for APA style and for sources other than books and journal articles, such as edited collections, newspaper articles, TV shows, and papers presented at meetings. Refer to your textbook or to the official MLA and APA style guides for the correct format.

Documenting Within the Text
In MLA style, insert the author's name and appropriate page numbers for each source you use, in parentheses at the end of the sentence where the quotation or paraphrase occurs. Do not include "p." or "pp." before the page numbers, and do not add a comma after the name. Place the parenthetical citation before the closing punctuation but outside the closing quotation marks, if the quotation ends at the end of the sentence. If the material runs to more than four typed lines, set it off from the main text in an extract, indented ten spaces from the left; eliminate the quotation marks in an extract, and place the parenthetical citation outside the end punctuation.

APA style emphasizes the publication date, since it is important in scientific writing to indicate how current are the sources you used in your research. In APA style, list the author's name and the year of publication, followed by page numbers for direct quotes. Separate these elements with commas, and precede the page numbers with "p." or "pp."

Documenting Electronic Sources
As part of your research you will consult electronic sources such as CD-ROMs, on-line databases, and the Internet. You are obligated to document these sources just as you document print sources. You must acknowledge what you used, where you found it, and how others can find it or obtain a copy. Always make a hard copy of an Internet source that you access, because Internet sources can be changed or deleted. There are four types of Internet sources that you need to know how to document: FTP (file transfer protocol) sites, WWW (World Wide Web) sites, discussion lists or newsgroups, and e-mail. Refer to your textbook for details on how to format these references.