Quoting
Sometimes, we want to use a sentence or two that we find in our research because we can't think of a way to say it better. In this case, we quote the author, which means to include the exact words they used and cite where we found the information.
The following example shows a quotation in APA style (the style of the American Psychological Association, which is often used in academic papers). But a quotation in MLA style would be similar (MLA stands for Modern Language Association, and this is the other most commonly used style in academic papers).
Example:
Many scientists have been researching global warming and climate change, providing them the opportunity to "probe causes of the climate variability simulated by coupled climate models that can reproduce reliable long-term climate variations" (Liu et al., 2012, p. 1064).
- Note that the example above starts with our own words, and then incorporates the quotation at the end of the sentence. The in-text citation shows that the first author's last name is Liu, and et al means there are other authors too. This in-text citation also shows the year the article was written, and on which page we can find this exact quotation.
- If we looked at the bibliographic citation at the end of the paper, it will start with Liu. The in-text citation must always include the first piece of information from the bibliographic citation (whether that be an author's last name or a title) since that's how we'll find the full information for the source being cited. The image below demonstrates how this looks in both the text of the paper and the Bibliography at the end of the paper for a different source (not the article by Liu).
(IRIS 4-2)
Example quotation from: "APA Guide to Plagiarism & Citing Sources (Canvas Module)" by Heath Ray Hayden, Bellevue College Library Media Center (Links to an external site.) is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (Links to an external site.) / A derivative from the original work (Links to an external site.)
IRIS 4-2: Copyright (c) 2008 IRIS 4-2 Washington State E-Learning Council. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the IRIS 4-2 Open Publication License (the latest version is presently available at http://library.clark.edu/projects/iris-4-2 Links to an external site.) and TILT Open Publication License (copyright © 1998-2004 by The University of Texas System Digital Library).