Importance of Citation and Referencing
Citation helps acknowledge sources from which you have taken information for your writing. Basically, you are trying to tell your readers where this information came from by attaching a reliable source. Referencing, on the other hand, can be defined as the detailing aspect of that source. With the help of reference, readers are able to know the type of source that is being used for the information. Citation and referencing, both, are important aspects of writing.
When to cite or reference your source?
While writing any content, you must first know that giving proper credits to a source is important. So, whenever you directly quote, paraphrase or summarize someone else’s content either from a book, newspaper, article or journal, it should be cited properly.
How to add citations or references?
Different researchers adopt different styles for citation. The most common one here is the APA style. According to this style, you must cite the author’s last name with the publication year. In the case of a direct quote, you need to add the page number as well.
Importance of citation and referencing
Most of you might question here is why do we actually need to do all this grind. Why cannot we simply use information from any source? Well, here is a detailed presentation of all such questions that underline the main reasons which make citation and referencing important.
Avoid plagiarism
Think of an article you just wrote, and someone else uses that information without asking for permission. Will you approve it after spending hours of hard work and effort on it? Well, it doesn’t actually matter from which source do you extract information; in any case, you are stealing someone else’s work, and that is the most important point here because you cannot steal someone else’s property.
This type of stealing is often called plagiarism, which can result in a copyright claim. Showing someone else’s work as yours is also regarded as plagiarism. And you need to know that colleges and universities have a strict policy against plagiarism.
Enhances the credibility
By citing sources and adding proper references to your content, you make your teachers aware that you have well researched the topic given for the assignment. This also makes your arguments look stronger, and your content becomes more credible and persuasive. This tends to create a much better impression on the evaluators.
Accessible sources
Another most crucial reason to cite sources is to allow your readers access the sources. Because the readers might want to explore more about the topic by simply looking at the sources. So, by adding citations and references, you allow your readers to go into the depths of the information.
Fact-checking
In order to convince your readers of the content you just wrote, you must demonstrate that the facts were taken from a dependable source. So, with the help of reference, your readers get to check the authenticity of your content. In simple words, you are trying to provide evidence of the claim by adding references.
Persuasive writing
When readers go through your content, they come across facts to be convinced of your view. But the authenticity of these facts majorly depends on the source. So, you must add references to your content to help persuade the readers.
So, this was all about the importance of citation and referencing of content which students need to adopt while writing. Apart from this, if you ever need help regarding your assignments or essays, feel free to contact our online assignment writing services for professional help and guidance.
