APA style- a citation style used primarily in the social sciences; strands for American Psychological Association MLA style- a citation style used primarily in the humanities; stands for the Modern Language Association
Purpose of Citing Sources It is important not only to get information from credible sources but also to properly document all borrowed ideas, information, concepts, arguments, or the information and attribute them to their authors or creators. This is done by citing sources. This procedure, which is an integral part of academic and professional writing, serves the following purposes. To give credit to the original author of a work Plagiarism is a serious offense in which someone takes and uses the ideas, information, concepts, arguments, or information of someone else, intentionally or unintentionally, without proper citation. To promote scholarly writing Scholarly writing means that you can exhaustively use related and existing ideas, information, concepts, and arguments of an expert and to properly attribute these to the source. To help your target audience identify your source More often than not, your target audience or readers want to either verify the information or learn more about the information from the source used in your paper.