Don't do Citations; Let Microsoft!

 You do not have to format your citations or your bibliography, Microsoft or any number of other programs will do it for you. Whenever I talk to students about the challenges of writing academic papers, the topic of citations is sure to come up. Students will tell me about the time spent trying to get the formatting correct or about running out of time to do so and losing credit because their citations are a mess. Even worse is when students give up, leave out citations and risk plagiarizing.

Citations are important. They let your readers know who you are putting your ideas in conversation with. They establish that you are a credible writer, someone worth paying attention to. Because you have taken the time to consider what others have to say about your topic, readers know that you are not just spouting off whatever comes into your head in the moment.

The consistent formatting of citations is a courtesy that you do for your readers and a way for you to signal that you can be trusted because you know the rules of the game. When you use MLA or APA style, readers appreciate not having to spend time decoding your citation. And just as you would not wear shorts and flip flops to an interview for an office job, you can dress your paper for success by giving it the equivalent of an "interview suit": a title page or header with your name, course, assignment and date; a title; 12-point, double-spaced font; a basic font like Times or Ariel; and correctly formatted citations.

However, getting the commas in the right place is not the best use of your time. Instead, spend your time thinking about what you know and what you want to know (for brainstorming strategies, see http://snl.depaul.edu/writing/inventing.html). Spend time finding sources that are credible (for guidance on evaluating sources, see http://snl.depaul.edu/writing/Writing%20Help.html#helpsource) and that help you think through the ideas for your paper. Spend time integrating these sources into your paper (for one way to do this, see http://www.csun.edu/~hflrc006/quote.html). 

As the videos below indicate, you can use Microsoft Word to format your citations and bibliography. The nice thing about this tool is that when you enter the information for a source once, you do not have to enter it again when you are working on a new paper. Similarly, Zotero is a free web-based tool. To learn more about it, see http://libguides.depaul.edu/zotero

 

So, let the computer do the busywork of putting the commas in the right place and use your time for the much more interesting (and challenging) work of exploring and communiating your thinking.