BBI2424 ACADEMIC WRITING/SEM1 2015_16/LECTURE NOTES 2-SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES/WEEK3

LECTURE NOTES 2 – Supplementary Notes

CITING & REFERENCING SOURCES

In-Text Citations (Citation in multiple sentences)

Citing your sources is important. It is one way to avoid plagiarism, which is a serious
offence in any academic work.

Adding proper citation in a single sentence is easy. However, to properly and clearly
attribute the original author’s ideas in multiple sentences is a bit tricky.

Below are paraphrased ideas that belong to the author Edward Barnhart (2010).

1. Method A – End of the sentence

Fusion of musical genres over the last two decades has exposed children to a
diversity of musical styles. Technology has also made the wide distribution and
sharing of music possible. As a result, children will likely develop diverse musical
tastes and are more open to different musical styles at a much younger age
(Barnhart, 2010).

Here, the citation is placed at the end of the paraphrased ideas. This method only
works if the information or the ideas is more important than the identity of the author
himself.

However, the problem with this method is that the reader would not know how many
of the ideas in the previous sentences actually belong to the original author.
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2. Method B – Within the sentence

According to Barnhart (2010), the fusion of musical genres over the last two
decades has exposed children to a diversity of musical styles. Barnhart further
adds that technology has also made the wide distribution and sharing of music
possible. As a result, Barnhart concludes that children will likely develop
diverse musical tastes and are more open to different musical styles at a much
younger age.

In this method, citation is added in each sentence. The year of publication is only
mentioned in the first instance of the citation. This will make it absolutely clear that
the sentences belong to the original author.

However, this method of citing multiple sentences can also make the author’s name
redundant as it is being repeated in every sentence.
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3. Method C – Combination

According to Barnhart (2010), the fusion of musical genres over the last two
decades has exposed children to a diversity of musical styles. He further adds
that technology has also made the wide distribution and sharing of music
possible. As a result, children will likely develop diverse musical tastes and are
more open to different musical styles at a much younger age (Barnhart, 2010).

In the third method above, you can alternate between citing the author’s name within
the sentence and citing the author’s name at the end of the sentence. You can also
replace the author’s name with pronouns (he, she, they, etc.).By using these
variations, you can avoid redundancy in your writing and still be clear throughout the
paragraph that the ideas are those of the original author.

(Adapted from: McAdoo, T. (2011). Citing paraphrased work in APA style. Retrieved
from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/11/how-to-cite-something-you-found-on-
a-website-in-apastyle.html)