Cite/document your sources according to the conventions of your discipline. Make sure to cite within your paper when you use the material, as well as including a bibliography or works cited.

All borrowed information must be cited. This includes not only direct quotations, but also paraphrases, summaries, charts, and graphs.

The following are common citation formats used. If you are unsure of what style to use, contact your professor.

Information on how to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of internet sources can be found here.

Charts, Tables, and Figures

Don’t forget to reference your charts and tables. Here are some links on how to develop useful charts and figures as well as some links on how to reference charts, tables, and figures within a document.

  • Developing useful charts and figures
  • Referencing charts, figures, and tables in a document

Appendices

Some papers require an appendix. Appendices contain information that is not essential to body of the research paper. Such non-essential information may include:

  • lists of terms
  • definitions
  • extra research material (surveys, questionnaires, etc.)
  • overly large tables of data
  • tables that summarize various data included the paper's body

These items are useful, but including them in the body of the research paper may detract from the main point. It is good to group extra material into sets, which means you may have more than one appendix. Be sure to give each appendix a number: Appendix 1, Appendix 2, etc.