How To Cite

(Latest revision 01/03/2000)

How to Cite Your Sources of Information

It is very important to good scholarship and intellectual honesty that you accurately and fully report the sources of information you employ in preparing your project.

YOUR LIST OF REFERENCES

Make a list of references. In the list, cite all your sources of information. Include the list as an attachment to your project handout. Also, place the list in your project web page where it will be easily found.

The entries in your list of references have to include certain information:

An entry for a web page has to report the title of the web page, the author (if available), and the full URL. Add any additional information you think may be helpful and/or necessary.
An entry for a book has to report the title, author, publisher, edition number, date of publication, and ISBN.
An entry for an article in a periodical must report the name of the editor of the issue of the periodical, the title of the periodical, the date of publication of the issue of the periodical, the name(s) of the author(s) of the article (if available), the title of the article, and the page numbers where the article is located.

WHEN YOU QUOTE A SOURCE

You may directly quote small passages from your sources.

It is seldom appropriate to quote a long passage from a source. It is practically never appropriate to closely paraphrase a long passage in a source.

You must place quotation marks ("") around all direct quotes. You must also indicate, in close proximity to the quote itself, which reference you are quoting, and where to find the quote within the reference. You can use an in-line comment or a footnote to identify the location of the quote.

For example, if you number the references in your reference list like this:

[1] Comer, "Computer Networks and Internets, Second Edition," Prentice Hall, 1999, ISBN 0-13-083617-6.

[2] Sobell, "Unix System V: a practical guide, Third Edition," Benjamin Cummings, 1995, 0-8053-7566-X.

Then you can identify the location of a quote with a simple in-line comment like this:

As Comer states on page 158 of [1]: "To achieve high bit rates over conventional twisted pair wiring, ADSL uses an adaptive technology in which a pair of modems probe many frequencies on the line between them ..."