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The Easy Guide to Finding Essay Sources: Academic Research Tips

Writing a good college essay can be tough and time-consuming. It will cost you several trips to the library, hours of pouring over your notes, and sleepless nights scouring online databases. ⏳

And while the internet is a huge pool of information, it is crucial to identify and use credible sources . So, the big question is: How can you find the right academic references for your college essay? 

Here’s a guide to finding essay sources that will impress your professor and get you that well-deserved A! 🔍

Start With Wikipedia 

Yes, we all know academic researchers frown upon Wikipedia since it’s user-generated (so anyone can write anything). But it’s actually a great springboard to get an overview of your essay topic . 💻

At the bottom of each Wikipedia page, you’ll find a treasure trove of legitimate sources and citations that you can use in your essay. 

Check Out Primary Sources

Primary sources are the building blocks of any research project. They must serve as the foundation of your research, whereas secondary sources should inform and supplement the primary sources.

Primary sources are first-hand accounts on a subject, often unedited, that offer a close, personal overview of a topic. They encourage students to read between the lines and approach them with a critical mindset. 🤔

When analyzing primary sources, ask yourself key questions like, “Who is the intended audience?” or “What does the source tell me about the period?”

By considering these questions, you can effectively understand the historical context and cultural perspectives and avoid potential bias or inaccuracy . This will also help you develop well-supported arguments and strengthen your essay. 💪

Get the Most Out of the Library

Students may gravitate toward online research but the good old library is still a trusted source of information . In fact, 58 percent of Americans aged 16 and older have a library card — and for good reason! 

Library databases allow you to efficiently search for published information, such as magazines, journals, and newspaper articles . 

These sources contain scholarly articles by notable authors, journalists, and researchers. If you hit a paywall for a journal or newspaper, verify if your library has a subscription — problem solved! ✅

But the most underutilized tool in libraries is the staff. Librarians know all about research methods, using information systems, statistics, and management. 

They’re experts when it comes to finding the information you need. All you have to do is ask your university librarian for help finding top-tier resources on your essay topic. 📚

Use Academic Search Engines 

Let’s get this straight: It’s hard to write a research paper without consulting the internet . 

Most of us start our search with Google, but unfortunately, search engines don’t always churn out credible results . That’s why it’s crucial to explore other portals with an academic focus when searching for essay sources . ⚠️

Check out these options:

• BASE : The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) contains 4,000 sources and provides search results from more than 100 million documents. They also offer an advanced search option that allows users to narrow down their research. The BASE advanced search lets users use filters such as author names, publication dates, and document types to find more relevant results, saving time and improving academic research efficiency.
• Refseek : A web search tool for students and researchers. You can access over a billion documents, books, newspapers, and journals without getting distracted by ads or sponsored links. 
• Google Scholar : This connects you with hundreds of relevant scholarly journals. What’s more, it provides formatted citations in MLA, AP, or APA that you can export to RefWorks or BibTex. 
• JSTOR : The platform provides a large collection of academic journals, books, and original sources from a variety of subjects.
• PubMed : This includes articles from scholarly journals and research institutes with a focus on biomedical and life sciences research.
• LexisNexis Academic : It focuses on researching legal and news-related subjects, including reports, legal publications, and court cases.   

Opt for Digital Libraries and Databases 

Digital libraries have specialized collections in all fields of study. They are easy to access and contain millions of books, audiobooks, journals, and videos that can help you further your essay research. 

The best part? No more waiting for popular books to become available! Digital libraries let you read and download content instantly, anytime, anywhere, using your computer or phone . 📱 

Of course, there may be some occasions where you’ll find your university doesn’t have access to a particular online database.  

If you’ve found the perfect journal article but can’t get access, try emailing the professor who wrote it and ask for a PDF — most academics will be quite happy to provide you access to their work. 📧

Don’t Forget the Bibliography of Your Sources

After you have a list of credible sources, take a closer look at their citations. Seek out the primary sources these citations used for research. This will open up a new set of materials to work with for your essay. 🗒️ 

Plus, they often contain references to publications that make alternate viewpoints or offer diverse interpretations of the topic at hand. 

TIP: Once you start your research, you may find the same sources pop up over and over again. Consult Google Scholar to see the articles in a publication that are cited the most (along with who cited them). Make a list of these and incorporate them in your essay. 

Look Beyond Journals and Books

The world of research is your oyster, and with a diverse array of sources, your academic essay can shine if you dare to explore the unconventional.

Peruse through thrilling audio and video recordings that transport you to historic moments or cultural events, or explore interviews with experts who can add personal insights and real-life perspectives to your essay . 🎧

Incorporate variety in the resources you add to make your essay an interesting read. This will also show your professor that you’ve gone above and beyond to create a well-researched essay. 👌

Note: Critically assess the reliability and validity of sources outside of the conventional academic channels because their level of accuracy may vary. Always check the author’s qualifications, and the reputation of the source, and cross-reference information from various sources.

Learn to Quickly Evaluate a Source

Essays and research papers come with deadlines. In an ideal world, you would meticulously examine each potential essay source, but there’s a smarter way to do it to save time! 🗓️

Here’s a helpful approach to evaluating a source: First, read the abstract or introduction of the source to decide if it’s useful for your work . 

Then, take a look at the citations and references at the end of the source . You can also check the publication date to ensure the information is current.

If it’s an online source, check out the domain name. Sites with .edu domains are associated with educational facilities, while .gov domains belong to government agencies. These sources are generally reliable due to their affiliation with reputable institutions. 

Additionally, examine the author’s credentials and expertise in the field . Look for authors who have relevant academic backgrounds or professional experience related to the topic. ✍️

Lastly, consider the reputation of the publisher . Reputable publishers are known for maintaining high standards of quality and accuracy in their publications. 

Don’t know where to start? Check the publisher’s website, browse through its publication list, and look for details about its editorial board and reviewers. 🧐

Putting together a top-notch essay is a Herculean task — but if you can collect the right resources you’re already halfway there! 💯

The Easy Guide to Finding Essay Sources: Frequently Asked Questions

What are academic sources .

Academic sources are dependable and trustworthy documents created by subject-matter specialists and distributed by respectable publishers or academic publications . 

They go through an exhaustive screening procedure and frequently contain citations or references to other academic publications.

How do I find trustworthy sources for my academic research?

Start with reputable sources such as scholarly journals and books from respected publishers. Consider the expertise of the author and the publisher’s reputation, and look for sources that have undergone the peer review process. 

Check the publication date to ensure the information is current. Be aware of potential biases in the sources and evaluate the evidence provided. 

What are the best sources for essays?

The best sources for essays are those that offer accurate and up-to-date information. 

Scholarly journals, expert books, government websites, academic databases, credible websites with specific domains (.gov,.edu, and .org), must-read books related to the topic, secondary readings for additional insights, scholarly sites, scientific papers, and reliable news and interviews are examples of these. 

How do I include a source in an essay? 

Introduce the source with an initial phrase. Then, summarize, paraphrase, or quote the material as needed and provide proper citations . 

When directly quoting the source, use quotation marks and cite the author, year, and page number. 

For summarizing, briefly present the main points and cite the author and year. When paraphrasing, restate the information in your own words and cite the author, year, and page number. 

Include relevant details about the author, title, and genre when citing the source for the first time. Each college may have varying guidelines for sourcing, so it’s important to check with your institution what is required.

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Primary Sources Essay Writing Guide. Where to Find Good Essay Sources?

• 🔑 What Do You Need to Know about Essay Sources
• 🔢 Examples of Primary, Secondary, & Tertiary Sources
• 🧱 Why Does Everyone Need Credible Sources?

5️⃣ Types of Primary Sources

• ✍️ How to Write a Primary Source Essay
• 🔎 Looking for Good Essay Sources? Check This

We will help you understand how to cite primary sources and write an excellent essay. Stay with us to find it out!

🔑 Essay Sources Explained

Once you’ve chosen the topic for your essay , you need to start thinking about writing it. A list of credible sources is what you are going to need in the first place.

So, we suggest you look into different types of academic sources existing out there!

6 Reasons to Make a List of Solid Sources in Your Essay

An essay is not exactly an academic genre. It’s not so strict-ruled and rigid. Still, the use of reliable and secure sources makes your piece wholesome.

Here are the reasons why it’s essential:

• Reliable sources back up your opinion. Readers tend to take your point of view if it’s well-grounded.
• A variety of literature provides you with other points, perspectives, and ideas: you are not alone in your opinion.
• Cited statements make your readers consider and discuss them as a part of the essay.
• Figures and data from credible sources add validity to your source essay.
• By reading all that literature , you make an impression of a researcher and analyst.
• Share the information with your readers so that they can read about the issues themselves.

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Sources

There is an endless variety of information, both online and offline. How to find what you need? The answer is simple: you just need to know precisely what to search for.

Various sources can fit different purposes and types of works. Let’s dig deeper into their specification!

I. Primary Sources

A primary source is direct, original data designed for further study and analysis. Such sources provide firsthand, authentic information related to an event, phenomenon, or any other subject.

Examples of primary sources are:

• Literary works
• Artworks: drawings, sketches
• Interviews or speeches
• Original letters or manuscripts
• Authentic documents of legislation or government
• Photographs or video recordings

These materials serve as a fundamental base for diverse types of researches. Primary sources are of wide use in historical or literary analysis. Scientific studies and critical commentaries also need primary sources.

There’s a wide range of purposes for which various primary sources serve:

• For instance, opinion poll findings can be inserted into sociological research.
• Or let’s take documentary archives: they are essential for an excellent historical monography.
• For a good essay about a famous person, you will need their lifetime recordings and interviews.

II. Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are on the second level of the authenticity hierarchy. It means someone has already processed the data, analyzed, or critiqued it.

That doesn’t make secondary sources worse or less valid, though. Let’s have a closer look at the examples:

• Scholarly articles and books
• Any type of criticism ( literary, music, or cinematography critique )
• Commentaries and reviews
• Interpretations, analysis, and synthesis
• Famous people’s biographies
• Textbooks (may be tertiary)

Secondary sources are usually interpretive. They tend to analyze already existing information pieces. That’s why one can find them in all sorts of scholarly works, surveys, and articles.

• For example, original scientific articles excerpted from journals are suitable for the literature review.
• Critical analyses of Malevich’s Manifesto will fit into the art history dissertation.
• Marylin Monro’s biography can become a part of a famous 50-s actress encyclopedia, as well.

So, secondary sources are directly related to the primary sources – they use them.

III. Tertiary Sources

Tertiary sources can be defined as a compilation of both primary and secondary sources together. It includes a thorough summary of organized information and its background.

Look at the examples to grasp the idea:

• Handbooks & textbooks
• Biographies or compilation of them
• Dictionaries & encyclopedias
• Card indexes and catalogs

A tertiary source lets you get easy and fast access to a large amount of data. They are accommodating for extensive surveys and researches.

• Let’s take an essay on the abortion issue. You’re going to need figures and statistics from the birth rate data reports to write it.
• Another example is a scholarly work studying American poets of the late 40s. More likely, you’ll need a catalog with specific names, so you can understand what to search.
• Or, you’re studying psychiatry and are about to write a term paper on addictions affecting people’s lives. In that case, a guidebook on different types of addictions will be of great value for you.

🔢 Primary, Secondary, Tertiary… It’s All Relative

Any document or piece of information can be primary, secondary, or tertiary.

It depends on the way you treat it.

Your exact question and a research focus play a decisive role while identifying the sources.

Let’s get a more precise understanding of this with the help of some good examples.

🧱 Why Finding Credible Sources Is a Must?

We hope you are now more confident with primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.

Now let’s get to the rules of defining a list of credible sources.

It’s essential to be picky and attentive when it comes to source selection! Don’t fall upon any text you encounter online, especially if the website isn’t reliable enough.

How to Find Credible Sources?

We suggest you a checklist for recognizing the most valid sources:

• H-index: check out a publication’s authority according to the Hirsch index . It’s one of the most reliable ways to prove article validity.
• Make sure the domain is safe . Websites with suspicious domains tend to provide dubious information.
• Look for some extra information: if you find some relevant source, try to look for references in other sources.

Anyway, the best way to make your paper decent and solid is to double-check all the data you use. Take as a rule analyzing and reflecting upon everything you read.

Now you know the very fundamentals of working with the sources, it’s time to move on.

The following section is about the types of primary sources.

Are you excited enough to find out what types of primary sources exist there?

5 Common Types of Primary Sources

We offer a list of five types of primary sources that are used pretty often. However, there are many more primary sources out there to study.

Cultural products

• Items produced within the cultural development of humanity.
• Different pieces of art and media: paintings, statues, movie tapes, clothing, or jewelry.
• Such physical evidence evokes imagination and facilitates research capacity. They demand a very consistent approach and have to be treated carefully.

Accounts on people/events/ideas

• Sources that transfer memories about specific phenomena, people, or occasions.
• Such items as memoirs, newspapers, chronicles, diaries comprise this scope.
• These pieces are like time machines that can reconstruct the picture of the past quickly.

Demographic data

• The information about the population of a particular place or time.
• Demographic data includes birth and death records and censuses.
• It has great value because it lets a researcher survey phenomena and processes related to the population.

Organizations’ records

• These documents disclose the peculiarities of the work process of an institution.
• It can be various kinds of archives, databases, church registers.
• They preserve complex information about employees, transactions, contracts, and other factual data.

Places’ records

• These are tools containing broad information about geographical locations.
• Maps, atlases, travel guides, or photographs.
• They also contribute to a more vivid and detailed picture of the whole situation for the research. All this delivers facts about a definite place, which makes analysis precise and accurate.

✍️ Writing a Primary Source Essay

Is it time to write a primary source essay yet?

Let’s learn how to deal with the primary sources analysis essay in this section.

Keep on reading what we have prepared to master writing essays with reliable sources!

1. What Is a Primary Source Essay?

A primary source essay is writing where you widely and frequently cite primary sources. You have to reflect upon them, analyze, and use them as a foundation for your arguments. For example, it can be an analysis essay studying the logic of literary devices used in the Iliad.

Here are the examples we’ve prepared for you for a better understanding:

• Topic: “Analysis of Clyde Griffiths’ character in Theodore Dreiser’s American Tragedy.” Concept: Look for descriptions of Clyde’s character in the book first. Then cite these extracts in your essay while solidifying your opinion. Primary sources: The primary source which you are going to use is the novel itself.
• Topic: “Analysis of the reasons for low birth rate in Northern countries.” Concept: Get down to searching sociological articles dedicated to this issue. Find the information that reveals particular reasons and use it as supporting arguments. Primary sources: birth statistics, value surveys, and other data about economic and well-being factors.
• Topic: “The peculiarities of female writers’ acceptance in the 1950s.” Concept: There must be a lot of criticism written in those years. Search for the most exciting and worth citing pieces, draw the quotations to your writing. Primary sources: book reviews, interpretations, newspaper articles of that period
• Topic: “Analysis of major turning points of WWII.” Concept: You’ll have to look for the sources containing the information on the critical WWII events. Refer to the views of different authors to prove the event was significant. Primary sources: books of authoritative historians and memoirs of war participants.
• Topic: “How modern female singers are presented in online media”? Concept: Head for digital sources dedicated to famous people’s lives, find articles, pictures, and interviews. Primary sources: online magazines, journals, and articles.

2. Primary Source Analysis Essay: Writing Guide

You already understand how to use primary sources in your writing. It’s time to comprehend the whole process of writing a primary source essay format in detail.

Are you ready?

Working with the Source

To ensure that a source is reliable and meets all the demands, you should conduct preliminary analysis . Any piece of information and external factors are worth your attention here.

Use this checklist to make yourself sure about source credibility:

• Learn about the author of the source. Where do they come from, what are their characteristics – social and demographic?
• Analyze the way the author tries to deliver the message: the style, language, tone. Does it have signs of prejudice or bias? Does the narrative show the author’s full awareness of the issue?
• Evaluate and describe the context of the document or whatever the source is.
• Try to find out the exact circumstances and time when the source first appeared.

Introducing the Key Ideas

Are you most likely to have a keen desire to sound persuasive to the audience? Let the readers comprehend the primary focus of research. Give a brief description of the main idea, state a thesis and your opinion before going into details.

Analyzing the Meaning

We have approached the central and the most supplemented part of the essay – its body.

It’s time to go all-in now.

In the central part of the analysis, you should use meticulous details and a thorough description of the essence.

Observe the fundamental points:

• You aim to prove the significance of the source for the work. Show the value the document or object carries and what questions it answers.
• Are there other viewpoints on the subject in question? Analyze different approaches and interpretations as well.
• Also, consider the points where this source isn’t helpful: answers on which questions it fails to give?

Concluding the Analysis

It’s the right moment to wind up with your primary source essay.

The process doesn’t differ much from that of any other type of essay. The peculiarities of the conclusion may vary depending on the research question.

• Comprise and sum up all your ideas and thoughts.
• Draw a consistent summary based on everything you’ve discussed in your writing.
• Repeat the value and novelty of using your primary sources one more time.

3. How to Cite a Primary Source?

The final step is to cite primary sources properly. There can be a great variety of them. For instance, you may have to cite primary sources from a book or website.

It may happen that you’ll have to cite sources both inside the text and in the bibliography list:

We’ll give you examples of how to cite a book or refer to a picture you use in the text.

How to Cite Primary Sources in Text

The citation appears right in the text.

How to Cite Primary Sources in Bibliography

Let’s see how to cite a source in the bibliography list now.

🔎 Where to Find Good Essay Sources?

If you are at this point, you know how to write an excellent primary source analysis essay. You definitely got an idea of how to cite primary sources for it.

It’s a good deal of work!

Now you wonder where to find good sources, do you?

No worries, we’ve prepared a list of reliable and trustworthy websites for you:

Academic Sources: Search Engines and Individual Publishers

Scholar.google.com Directory of Open Access Journals Aosis Open Journals Taylor & Francis Copernicus Publications F1000Research Highwire free online full-text articles Hindawi Publishing Corporation Open Book Publishers Open Edition PeerJ Public Library of Science Sage The Company of Biologists

University Libraries with Open Access Policies

MIT Libraries Harvard Library Databases Yale Digital Collections Center University of Hawaii Library Columbia University Libraries

Open Access to Academic Sources – Full-Text Articles

Dovepress Academic Journals Open Library (JSTOR’s project) National Agricultural Library AGRIS Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Arachne (Archaeology, Art History database) Arnetminer (Computer Science database) arXiv Cornell University Library

Hopefully, you’ll have no problem accessing the academic sources you need.

And that takes us to the final checklist. Go through this list and figure your strong and weak sides.

• You clearly understand the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. You know when to use each of them.
• You know how to detect credible sources, where to find them, and how to evaluate them.
• You exactly know which type of primary sources you need for your essay topic.
• You’ve conducted a preliminary analysis with these sources and gathered the basic info about the author, date, and place of creation, as well as analyzed discussion, critique, etc.
• You’ve sufficiently applied the data from the primary sources in your essay.
• You’ve followed all rules of citing primary sources: they are cited correctly both in text and bibliography.

We wish you lots of inspiration and good luck 🍀

Research Paper Analysis: How to Analyze a Research Article + Example

Film analysis: example, format, and outline + topics & prompts.

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A Student’s Guide to Finding Quality Sources for Essays

• 9-minute read
• 1st August 2023

So, you’ve been assigned your first college essay. You need to write at least a thousand words but have one issue: you must include quality sources, which will go in the reference list. Your professor has only told you, “Utilize academic databases and scholarly journals.”

Okay, so how exactly do you find credible sources for your essay ? Well, we’ll guide you through that in today’s post. We’ll explore finding quality sources and why you need them. By the time you finish reading, you’ll be ready to find sources for your essay.

Why Do I Need Sources?

You likely learned the importance of sources in high school. You need them to show that you are well-read on your chosen topic. You can’t ignore the importance of conducting academic research , as it will be part of your daily college grind.

Submitting an essay without sources would be like serving a hamburger with just the bun and beef patty. Think of sources as toppings on a burger. An essay lacking sources will undermine your credibility, leaving your professor wondering, “How do you know that?”

You also need to include citations to support your claims, which come from the sources you choose.

Finding Sources

Finding sources will depend on whether you want primary or secondary sources . Primary sources provide first-hand facts about your topic. For example, if your topic is related to literature, you would seek novels or poems as your primary sources. Secondary sources contain information from primary sources, such as journal articles.

Whether they’re primary or secondary sources, here are our suggestions for finding them.

1.   Consult the Textbook

Your course textbook is a great starting point, as it will likely contain valuable and relevant information about your topic. Many students believe the textbook won’t be accepted as a source for an essay, but this is false. Your professor will welcome citations from the textbook.

2.   Head to Your School’s Library

No, we’re not suggesting heading to the library’s on-site Starbucks, hoping for source-searching inspiration as you sip that frothy latte! Your school’s library contains numerous print sources, such as books, magazines, and newspapers. College libraries also subscribe to databases containing journal articles.

Journal articles are highly valued in academic research; every professor will expect at least a few of them in a reference list. Journal articles, or academic journals, are the most current sources in academia written by renowned scholars in the chosen field of study. Additionally, journal articles contribute to the field, summarize the current situation of it, and add new insight to the theory. They are also credible, as field experts review them before publication.

You don’t have to leave your dorm and head to the library. You can access various sources from your school’s library database online. Here’s an example of a student accessing the University of South Florida’s library database from their favorite coffee shop.

Navigating your library’s database can seem daunting; however, the library staff will be more than happy to help you, so don’t be afraid to seek help.

Finally, your institution’s library uses an inter-library loan system, allowing students to request out-of-stock print or online sources. If the library doesn’t have a specific item you need, there’s a good chance they can get it from another library.

3.   Research Databases

You can use online research databases to find journal articles, other scholarly sources, and specific books. Research databases, which feature various search functions, can help you find the most current and relevant sources.

These research databases are available through your school library, giving you access to popular subject-specific databases such as JSTOR, Project Muse, and PubMed. You can download and save relevant articles from such databases; however, you must be logged into your student account to access and download full-version articles.

Knowing the essay’s scope and relevant keywords is essential for an optimal experience with databases. Once you become familiar with databases, they’ll be your best friends when conducting academic research.

4. Google Scholar

If Google is your preferred poison, we suggest using Google Scholar . It’s Google’s academic search engine, which works like an ordinary Google search except that it finds relevant academic print and online sources. Take this example of a student using Google Scholar to search for sources related to cyberbullying in schools.

Google Scholar presents various journal articles for the student. You can refine your search to find articles that have been published within the last year. One distinguishing Google Scholar feature is its Cited by function that shows the number of times a source has been cited. This function can inform you about a source’s credibility and importance to your topic.

5.   Boolean Operators

We suggest using Boolean operators if your essay topic contains multiple search terms. Boolean operators expand or narrow your search parameters when using research databases. They use AND , OR , and NOT to include or exclude keywords from your search, allowing students to connect various keywords to optimize their search results. Boolean operators can be tricky if you aren’t familiar with using AND, OR, and NOT in search parameters.

Let’s say you’re searching for an article on cyberbullying written by an author named Bales in 2003. You can use AND to find the title of the article using keywords.

This will tell the database that all three terms must be present in the search result.

You can use OR to connect two or more similar concepts and broaden your search. This means any search terms you input can appear in the search results.

You can use NOT to exclude words or terms from your search by typing the excluded word after OR.

The search result will include soccer and omit football . This can be very useful in this example, as football is the UK word for soccer. It also means American football in US English. Because the student only wants to find soccer results, excluding football will avoid pulling up results related to American football.

Boolean operators are helpful if you clearly understand the scope of the assignment and know relevant keywords.

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6.   Additional Online Sources

Searching for general online sources is another way to go. You can find potential sources from websites and blogs. We suggest consulting popular news websites such as BBC News and the New York Times, as they often have current and relevant articles related to the topic.

We encourage you to err on the side of caution when using non-academic online sources. You need to ensure that online sources are credible . We recommend looking for sites with trusted domain extensions, such as . edu, .org , and .gov . URLs with .edu endings are educational resources, while .org endings are resources from organizations. Endings with .gov are government-related resources.

It’s also a good idea to look for sources that contain a Digital Object Finder ( DOI ). A DOI is a permanent string attached to online journal articles and books, making it simple to retrieve them. Articles with DOIs indicate that they have been published in peer-reviewed articles.

How Many Sources Should I Have?

The essay rubric will probably specify the number of sources required. However, this is not always the case, so you need to use some judgment. The basic rule is to gather sources until you have enough information to support your claims. If you’re writing an essay of 2,000 words, you should have at least six sources. Remember that your professor expects variety. Try this approach:

–    One book (if possible)

–    Two to three journal articles

–    One additional online source (preferably with a trusted domain extension)

Depending on the field of study, you may find that most of your sources come from journal articles.

 Here’s a recap of finding quality sources for your essay:

●  Professors want you to find a variety of sources (print and online)

●  Your school’s library has access to thousands of highly-valued journal articles from its database

●  Have a solid understanding of the topic and relevant keywords when using Boolean operators to narrow your search results

●  Evaluate the credibility of additional online sources

●  Look for websites with trusted domain extensions

●  As a rule, use at least six sources for an essay of 2,000 words

By following our suggestions, you can get your search off to a flying start. We also recommend keeping track of your sources as you conduct your research. This will make it easier to correctly format citations from your sources.

Finally, we urge you to search for sources right after your professor assigns the essay. Waiting until a few days before the essay is due to start searching is a bad idea.

1. What Types of Sources Are Recommended?

We recommend credible websites, books, journal articles, and newspapers.

2. How Do I Know if a Source Is Credible?

 A source is credible if:

●  The author is an expert in the field or is a well-respected publisher (New York Times)

●  It contains citations for sources used

●  The website has a trusted domain extension

●  It has current information on your topic

3. How Can I Get the Most Out of Research Databases?

Brainstorm specific keywords related to your topic. This will help you efficiently use Boolean operators. You should also have a clear understanding of the scope of your essay. Finally, use databases that are related to your topic. For instance, if your topic is literature then JSTOR is a good option.

4. Is Writing the Reference List Difficult?

This will depend on the required referencing style, such as APA, MLA, and Chicago. Remember to list the sources alphabetically in the reference list.

Once you’ve written the list, we recommend proofreading it. Your professor will be checking that your reference list meets the referencing style guidelines. A second pair of eyes always helps, so we recommend asking our proofreading experts to review your list . They can check that your sources are listed alphabetically. Additionally, our proofreaders will check that your list meets referencing style guidelines. Our proofreaders are pros with popular referencing styles such as MLA and APA. Consider submitting a 500-word document for free!

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Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Research for Essay Writing in English

• Library Terminology
• Types of sources
• Google vs. Library Databases
• Building your search strategy
• Running your search
• Evaluating your results
• Chicago Manual of Style

Peer-reviewed or Not?

How can you determine if an article has been peer-reviewed?

• On the article itself, look for submission and acceptance dates for an article
• For a journal, look at the cover info to determine the presence of an editorial board or committee.
• In the record look for the field  referred  to determine if the journal is peer-reviewed.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you should be able to: 

• Identify various formats in which information can be found
• Understand when it is appropriate to utilize various source types based on your specific information needs

What is a Source?

In your courses, you may hear your professors refer to 'sources of information'. But what do we mean when we say sources? Information can be found in an incredibly wide variety of types, formats, and styles. This can include anything created from other people, to text, to video, and everything found in between. Anything that provides information or material that informs your thoughts on a topic can be considered a source of information. 

Each source type has a specific role in research and may be more or less useful for you depending on your specific research context. It is important to understand the different sources of information and what you can gain from them. Prior to starting your research, make sure that you consider your information needs. Are you looking for more of a topic overview / general information? Or do you need in-depth, detailed information on your topic? Having these considerations in mind will allow you to create an appropriate research plan and will ultimately make your research process easier. 

There are many different ways in which sources can be categorized. Below we will describe two of these possible categorizations which are commonly referred to in academia: 

• primary sources vs secondary sources
• scholarly sources vs professional sources vs popular sources .  

Primary and Secondary Sources

What is a primary source? A primary source is a piece of evidence. It is a by-product of an event, or a recording of an event as it happened. Here are some examples:

In the humanities, a primary source could be: correspondences, interviews, manuscripts, newspapers, novels, paintings, period artifacts, photographs, statistics, surveys, testimonies, videos, etc. 

In the sciences, a primary source could be: articles detailing an original study, case notes or report forms, clinical exams, experimental protocols, industrial drawings, raw data or results, etc. 

Why use a primary source? Primary sources allow direct entry into a historical event or pieces of evidence. Sometimes they are difficult to understand. Having even a surface understanding of the context in which they were produced helps to interpret primary sources.

(Source: History - Primary Sources by Jennifer Dekker and Types of Sources by SASS)

What is a secondary source? Secondary sources, also called academic sources or scientific sources, are analytical documents that interpret primary sources. They are created by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you're researching. 

They include books, electronic resources, memoirs, monographs, peer-reviewed articles, theses.

Why use a secondary source? You will be asked to use secondary sources to support your ideas and arguments when writing any academic papers. Since they are often written by experts to review, analyze, explain or interpret primary sources, they will help you understand a topic and provide you with different perspectives. Remember that not all secondary sources are considered scholarly or academic. 

(Source: Types of Sources by SASS and Library Research Guide for the History of Science by Harvard Library)

Scholarly, Professional, and Popular Sources

A second categorization of information sources includes scholarly sources vs professional or trade sources vs popular sources. These categories refer to the specific audience for which they are being produced. 

Scholarly sources  are typically written by an expert, on their own original research, for an audience of other experts. Because of this, they often include discipline-specific jargon and terminology that make it harder for non-experts to understand. At the end of the source, you will find a bibliography containing the full references of all of the other sources used to support their claims. Many scholarly sources have gone through a peer-review process (described in detail further down on the page). 

Professional or trade sources  are typically written by practitioners within a specific field, for other practitioners in that field. Because of this, they often use the terminology and language that is commonly used within the field but may not be common knowledge to the general public. While scholarly sources usually focus more on theory or academic research, professional sources focus on current practices and developments in the field. At the end of the source, you may find a bibliography, however, it will not be as extensive as in scholarly publications.

Popular sources  are typically written by non-experts (journalists or writers) for the general public. Since it is being produced for a more general audience, they do not use discipline-specific terminology and do not assume that you have any prior knowledge of the subject. As a result, they are typically much easier to understand. Depending on the type of popular source, they may refer to scholarly sources, however, they do not usually contain a full bibliography. 

What does "peer reviewed" or "refereed" mean?

To confirm that a journal is peer-reviewed look for submission and acceptance dates for an article, or at the cover info of the journal to determine the presence of an editorial board or committee.

Many databases provide the option to limit to scholarly /academic/ peer-reviewed journals during the search process.

Scholarly articles are not found in newspapers or popular magazines.  If your topic is current there may be few. Academic/scholarly journals can also be recognized by other characteristics:

• they usually have an “abstract”
• they tend to be longer in length
• they may have charts or graphs
• they contain minimal advertising
• they are  usually available at a university library or through a subscription
• they may have words like Review, Studies or Quarterly in title
• << Previous: Library Terminology
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• Last Updated: Oct 29, 2022 6:43 PM
• URL: https://uottawa.libguides.com/research-essay-writing

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Praxis Core Writing

Course: praxis core writing   >   unit 1.

• Argumentative essay | Quick guide

Source-based essay | Quick guide

• Revision in context | Quick guide
• Within-sentence punctuation | Quick guide
• Subordination and coordination | Quick guide
• Independent and dependent Clauses | Video lesson
• Parallel structure | Quick guide
• Modifier placement | Quick guide
• Shifts in verb tense | Quick guide
• Pronoun clarity | Quick guide
• Pronoun agreement | Quick guide
• Subject-verb agreement | Quick guide
• Noun agreement | Quick guide
• Frequently confused words | Quick guide
• Conventional expressions | Quick guide
• Logical comparison | Quick guide
• Concision | Quick guide
• Adjective/adverb confusion | Quick guide
• Negation | Quick guide
• Capitalization | Quick guide
• Apostrophe use | Quick guide
• Research skills | Quick guide

Source-based essay (30 minutes)

• insightfully explains why the concerns are important, supporting the explanation with effective links between the two sources and well-chosen reasons, examples, or details
• incorporates information from both sources to identify and explain important concerns regarding the issue discussed in the sources
• organizes and develops ideas logically
• displays effective sentence variety
• clearly displays facility in the use of language
• is generally free from errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics
• cites both sources when paraphrasing or quoting
• clearly explains why the concerns are important, supporting the explanation with clear links between the two sources and relevant reasons, examples, or details
• organizes and develops ideas clearly
• displays some sentence variety
• displays facility in the use of language
• adequately explains why the concerns are important, supporting the explanation with some links between the two sources and adequate reasons, examples, or details
• shows control in the organization and development of ideas
• displays adequate use of language
• shows control of grammar, usage, and mechanics, but may display errors
• limited in explaining why the concerns are important
• incorporates only one source to identify and explain concerns regarding the issue discussed in the sources, or incorporates two sources inadequately
• limited in supporting the explanation (establishes only a weak link between the sources and/or offers inadequate reasons, examples, or details)
• limited control in the organization and development of ideas
• an accumulation of errors in the use of language
• an accumulation of errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics
• cites sources when paraphrasing or quoting
• fails to explain why the concerns are important
• incorporates only one source weakly or fails to identify concerns regarding the issue discussed in the sources
• offers weak support for the explanation (no link between the sources and/or few or no relevant reasons, examples, or details)
• weak organization or very little development
• frequent serious errors in the use of language
• frequent serious errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics
• fails to cite any sources when paraphrasing or quoting
• contains serious and persistent writing errors or
• is incoherent or
• is undeveloped or
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Extended Essay: Step 7. Identify Sources

• Extended Essay- The Basics
• Step 1. Choose a Subject
• Step 2. Educate yourself!
• Using Brainstorming and Mind Maps
• Identify Keywords
• Do Background Reading
• Define Your Topic
• Conduct Research in a Specific Discipline
• Step 5. Draft a Research Question
• Step 6. Create a Timeline
• Find Articles
• Find Primary Sources
• Get Help from Experts
• Search Engines, Repositories, & Directories
• Databases and Websites by Subject Area
• Create an Annotated Bibliography
• Advice (and Warnings) from the IB
• Chicago Citation Syle
• MLA Works Cited & In-Text Citations
• Step 9. Set Deadlines for Yourself
• Step 10. Plan a structure for your essay
• Evaluate & Select: the CRAAP Test
• Conducting Secondary Research
• Conducting Primary Research
• Formal vs. Informal Writing
• Presentation Requirements
• Evaluating Your Work

The Research Process

See this page for information on:

Cautions from IB on online encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia) Searching effectively in databases and on the Internet Selecting appropriate information Using Boolean Operators Why you need a range of sources

Cautions from IB on Using Free Online Encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia)

• they tend to be general encyclopedias
• very often the author is unknown
• there is no guarantee that the content meets standards of academic rigour —it may not, for example, have been through a process of peer review
• the content can be unstable , in that it can change at any time.

A bibliography that only cites these for reference or an argument that is overly reliant on them will not demonstrate the necessary “range of sources” required by the assessment criteria for the extended essay. They may also not be relevant or appropriate for the research question being explored.  Many online encyclopedias are not scholarly sources; however, if used appropriately and critically they can offer a useful starting point for many students undertaking research. 

If you are using free online encyclopedias, you should do the following.

• Follow the references provided by the encyclopedia; this will help to verify the information given.
• Consider whether the article is part of a larger project, where a number of people are contributing to the discussion. If it is, then it implies that the writers have more than a casual interest in the topic being written about.
• Look to see if there is a rating for the information provided. If there is then this means that the information has undergone some sort of peer review and been given a rating. While not the same as an academic peer review, it can aid the judgment of the “quality” of the information.

The key point to remember is if you do use information that is found on the Internet, you are responsible for ensuring that it is both reliable and accurate. You can produce an annotated bibliography as a way to explain to your supervisor about the quality of your sources. An annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source and some assessment of its value and relevance.

Adapted from "The research and writing process; Academic honesty, Using online encyclopedias and other similar information websites", from Extended Essay Guide , International Baccalaureate Organization, 2016.

Selecting appropriate information

Searching effectively in databases and on the internet.

By using effective search techniques you can find useful, relevant information without having to waste lots of time trawling through all those unwanted search results!

Use these tips to help you search a variety of information sources including databases, library catalogs, and the Internet.

• If you have a choice, choose the Advanced Search  option, it will allow you to limit your search in a number of ways.
• When planning your search, remember to use the keywords you identified in the 'Define' section.
• Don't forget to use Boolean Operators (find more information on this page) to create your search strings.
• The truncation symbol (*) can be used to find variations of a keyword that begin with the same letters.  For example econom* would find economy, economic, economics, economical etc.
• Keep track of the searches you use so you don't go round in circles.  Note down particularly useful search strings.
• Use quotation marks to group a number of words together (ie "Top Gear" would search for all results with the phrase 'Top Gear' but would ignore those where 'top' and 'gear' only appear seperately).
• Verify important information by looking for the same information in a number of reliable sources.

Using Boolean Operators

Twelve-step plan for researching the extended essay - step 7.

7.  Begin to identify how and where you will gather source material for your research.

Why you Need a Range of Sources

There are many information sources, from the obvious ones like books, magazines, newspapers and Internet sites to those you may not immediately think of such as maps, annual reports, conference proceedings and theses.  All sources have strengths and weaknesses and you should consider these when deciding on the most appropriate sources to use in your research.

Bookmarking & Organizing Tools

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REFERENCE FINDER

Find relevant information like your own rough draft from among the 12,861 reports available for free at NAP.edu. Copy and paste up to 8 pages of content from some other source: an outside article, a rough draft of your own, etc., then select "Find Relevant Reports".

Find Relevant Reports

Click here to search reports published from the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Research Council.

Build Web Searches

Click here to view key search phrases derived from your content for searching on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and NAP.edu.

The Reference Finder is provided exclusively as a research tool. No information will be retained regarding use of this resource beyond normal server logs. That is, entered text is not retained, and the staff of the National Academies will make no correlations between server logs, IP addresses, and submitted content.

What is the Reference Finder?

Citation Generator

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• Select style:
• Archive material
• Chapter of an edited book
• Conference proceedings
• Dictionary entry
• Dissertation
• DVD, video, or film
• E-book or PDF
• Edited book
• Encyclopedia article
• Government publication
• Music or recording
• Online image or video
• Presentation
• Press release
• Religious text

What Is Cite This For Me's Citation Generator?

Cite This For Me’s open-access generator is an automated citation machine that turns any of your sources into citations in just a click. Using a citation generator helps students to integrate referencing into their research and writing routine; turning a time-consuming ordeal into a simple task.

A citation machine is essentially a works cited generator that accesses information from across the web, drawing the relevant information into a fully-formatted bibliography that clearly presents all of the sources that have contributed to your work.

If you don’t know how to cite correctly, or have a fast-approaching deadline, Cite This For Me’s accurate and intuitive citation machine will lend you the confidence to realise your full academic potential. In order to get a grade that reflects all your hard work, your citations must be accurate and complete. Using a citation maker to create your references not only saves you time but also ensures that you don’t lose valuable marks on your assignment.

Not sure how to format your citations, what citations are, or just want to find out more about Cite This For Me’s citation machine? This guide outlines everything you need to know to equip yourself with the know-how and confidence to research and cite a wide range of diverse sources in your work.

Why Do I Need To Cite?

Simply put, referencing is the citing of sources used in essays, articles, research, conferences etc. When another source contributes to your work, you have to give the original owner the appropriate credit. After all, you wouldn’t steal someone else’s possessions so why would you steal their ideas?

Any factual material or ideas you take from another source must be acknowledged in a reference, unless it is common knowledge (e.g. President Kennedy was killed in 1963). Failing to credit all of your sources, even when you’ve paraphrased or completely reworded the information, is plagiarism. Plagiarizing will result in disciplinary action, which can range from losing precious points on your assignment to expulsion from your university.

What’s more, attributing your research infuses credibility and authority into your work, both by supporting your own ideas and by demonstrating the breadth of your research. For many students, crediting sources can be a confusing and tedious process, but it’s a surefire way to improve the quality of your work so it’s essential to get it right. Luckily for you, using Cite This For Me’s citation machine makes creating accurate references easier than ever, leaving more time for you to excel in your studies.

In summary, the referencing process serves three main functions:

• To validate the statements and conclusions in your work by providing directions to other sound sources that support and verify them.
• To help your readers locate, read and check your sources, as well as establishing their contribution to your work.
• To give credit to the original author and hence avoid committing intellectual property theft (known as ‘plagiarism’ in academia).

How Do I Cite My Sources With The Cite This For Me's Citation Machine?

Cite This For Me’s citation generator is the most accurate citation machine available, so whether you’re not sure how to format in-text citations or are looking for a foolproof solution to automate a fully-formatted works cited list, this citation machine will solve all of your referencing needs.

Referencing your source material doesn’t just prevent you from losing valuable marks for plagiarism, it also provides all of the information to help your reader find for themselves the book, article, or other item you are citing. The accessible interface of this citation builder makes it easy for you to identify the source you have used – simply enter its unique identifier into the citation machine search bar. If this information is not available you can search for the title or author instead, and then select from the search results that appear below the citation generator.

The good news is that by using tools such as Cite This For Me, which help you work smarter, you don’t need to limit your research to sources that are traditional to cite. In fact, there are no limits to what you can reference, whether it be a YouTube video, website or a tweet.

To use the works cited generator, simply:

• Select from APA, MLA, Chicago, ASA, IEEE and AMA * styles.
• Choose the type of source you would like to cite (e.g. website, book, journal, video).
• Enter the URL , DOI , ISBN , title, or other unique source information into the citation generator to find your source.
• Click the ‘Cite’ button on the citation machine.
• Copy your new reference from the citation generator into your bibliography or works cited list.
• Repeat for each source that has contributed to your work.

*If you require another referencing style for your paper, essay or other academic work, you can select from over 7,500 styles.

Once you have created your Cite This For Me account you will be able to use the citation machine to generate multiple references and save them into a project. Use the highly-rated iOS or Android apps to create references in a flash with your smartphone camera, export your complete bibliography in one go, and much more.

What Will The Citation Machine Create For Me?

Cite This For Me’s citation maker will generate your reference in two parts; an in-text citation and a full reference to be copied straight into your work.

The citation machine will auto-generate the correct formatting for your works cited list or bibliography depending on your chosen style. For instance, if you select a parenthetical style on the citation machine it will generate an in-text citation in parentheses, along with a full reference to slot into your bibliography. Likewise, if the citation generator is set to a footnote style then it will create a fully-formatted reference for your reference page and bibliography, as well as a corresponding footnote to insert at the bottom of the page containing the relevant source.

Parenthetical referencing examples:

In-text example: A nation has been defined as an imagined community (Anderson, 2006).* Alternative format: Anderson (2006) defined a nation as an imagined community.

*The citation machine will create your references in the first style, but this should be edited if the author’s name already appears in the text.

Bibliography / Works Cited list example: Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

Popular Citation Examples

• Citing archive material
• Citing artwork
• Citing an audiobook
• Citing the Bible
• Citing a blog
• Citing a book
• Citing a book chapter
• Citing a comic book
• Citing conference proceedings
• Citing a court case
• Citing a database
• Citing a dictionary entry
• Citing a dissertation
• Citing an eBook
• Citing an edited book
• Citing an email
• Citing an encyclopedia article
• Citing a government publication
• Citing an image
• Citing an interview
• Citing a journal article
• Citing legislation
• Citing a magazine
• Citing a meme
• Citing a mobile app
• Citing a movie
• Citing a newspaper
• Citing a pamphlet
• Citing a patent
• Citing a play
• Citing a podcast
• Citing a poem
• Citing a presentation
• Citing a press release
• Citing a pseudonym
• Citing a report
• Citing Shakespeare
• Citing social media
• Citing a song
• Citing software
• Citing a speech
• Citing translated book
• Citing a TV Show
• Citing a weather report
• Citing a website
• Citing Wikipedia article
• Citing a YouTube video

What Are Citation Styles?

A citation style is a set of rules that you, as an academic writer, must follow to ensure the quality and relevance of your work. There are thousands of styles that are used in different academic institutions around the world, but in the US the most common are APA, MLA and Chicago.

The style you need to use will depend on the preference of your professor, discipline or academic institution – so if you’re unsure which style you should be using, consult your department and follow their guidelines exactly, as this is what you’ll be evaluated on when it comes to grading.

Referencing isn’t just there to guard against plagiarism – presenting your research in a clear and consistent way eases the reader’s comprehension. Each style has a different set of rules for both page formatting and referencing. Be sure to adhere to formatting rules such as font type, font size and line spacing to ensure that your work is easily legible. Furthermore, if your work is published as part of an anthology or collected works, each entry will need to be presented in the same style to maintain uniformity throughout. It is important to make sure that you don’t jump from one style to another, so follow the rules carefully to ensure your reference page and bibliography are both accurate and complete.

If you need a hand with your referencing then why not try Cite This For Me’s citation builder? It’s the quickest and easiest way to reference any source, in any style. The citation generator above will create your references in MLA format style as standard, but this powerful citation machine can generate fully-formatted references in thousands of the widely used global college styles – including individual university variations of each style. So, whether your subject requires you to use the APA citation , or your professor has asked you to adopt the Chicago style citation so that your work includes numbered footnotes, we’re sure to have the style you need. Cite This For Me also offers a citation machine and helpful formatting guide for styles such as ASA , IEEE or AMA . To access all of them, simply create your free account and search for your specific style.

Popular Citation Styles

• ACS Referencing Generator
• AMA Citation Generator
• APA Citation Generator
• APSA Referencing Generator
• ASA Citation Generator
• Bluebook Citation Generator
• Chicago Style Citation Generator
• Harvard Referencing Generator
• IEEE Referencing Generator
• MHRA Referencing Generator
• MLA Citation Generator
• Nature Referencing Generator
• OSCOLA Referencing Generator
• Oxford Referencing Generator
• Turabian Citation Generator
• Vancouver Referencing Generator

How Do I Format A Works Cited List Or Bibliography?

Drawing on a wide range of sources greatly enhances the quality of your work, and reading above and beyond your recommended reading list – and then using these sources to support your own thesis – is an excellent way to impress your reader. A clearly presented works cited list or bibliography demonstrates the lengths you have gone to in researching your chosen topic.

Typically, a works cited list starts on a new page at the end of the main body of text and includes a complete list of the sources you have actually cited in your paper. This list should contain all the information needed for the reader to locate the original source of the information, quote or statistic that directly contributed to your work. On the other hand, a bibliography is a comprehensive list of all the material you may have consulted throughout your research and writing process. Both provide the necessary information for readers to retrieve and check the sources cited in your work.

Each style’s guidelines will define the terminology of ‘ works cited ’ and ‘ bibliography ’, as well as providing formatting guidelines for font, line spacing and page indentations. In addition, it will instruct you on how to order your works cited list or bibliography – this will usually be either alphabetical or chronological (meaning the order that these sources appear in your work). Before submitting your work, be sure to check that you have formatted your whole paper – including your reference page and bibliography – according to your style’s formatting guidelines.

Sounds complicated? Referencing has never been so easy; Cite This For Me’s citation machine will automatically generate fully-formatted references for your works cited page or bibliography in your chosen style. Sign in to your Cite This For Me account to save and export your bibliography straight into Microsoft Word, Evernote, EndNote and more. If that sounds like too much work.

How Do Citations Actually Work?

Although the citation generator will create your bibliography and works cited list for you in record time, it is still useful to understand how this system works behind the scenes. Understanding how a citation machine actually generates references will greatly increase the quality of your work.

As well as saving you time with its citation maker, Cite This For Me provides the learning resources to help you fully understand the citing process and the benefits of adopting great referencing standards.

The referencing process:

• Find a book, journal, website or other source that will contribute to your work.
• Save the quote, image, data or other information that you will use in your work.
• Save the source information that enables you to find it again (i.e. URL, ISBN, DOI etc.).
• Format the source information into a reference.
• Copy and paste the reference into the body of the text.
• Repeat for each source that contributes to your work.
• Export or copy and paste the fully-formatted reference into your bibliography.

Manage all your citations in one place

Create projects, add notes, cite directly from the browser and scan books’ barcodes with a mobile app.

Sign up to Cite This For Me – the ultimate citation management tool.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

The Grim Reality of Banning TikTok

T he U.S. government, once again, wants to ban TikTok. The app has become an incontrovertible force on American phones since it launched in 2016, defining the sounds and sights of pandemic-era culture. TikTok’s burst on the scene also represented a first for American consumers, and officials—a popular social media app that wasn’t started on Silicon Valley soil, but in China.

On March 13, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or else the app will be banned on American phones. The government will fine the two major mobile app stores and any cloud hosting companies to ensure that Americans cannot access the app.

While fashioned as a forced divestiture on national security grounds, let’s be real: This is a ban. The intent has always been to ban TikTok, to punish it and its users without solving any of the underlying data privacy issues lawmakers claim to care about. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw said it outright : “No one is trying to disguise anything… We want to ban TikTok.”

But, as such, a ban of TikTok would eliminate an important place for Americans to speak and be heard. It would be a travesty for the free speech rights of hundreds of millions of Americans who depend on the app to communicate, express themselves, and even make a living. And perhaps more importantly, it would further balkanize the global internet and disconnect us from the world.

Read more: What to Know About the Bill That Could Get TikTok Banned in the U.S.

This isn’t the first time the government has tried to ban TikTok: In 2021, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order that was halted in federal court when a Trump-appointed judge found it was “arbitrary and capricious” because it failed to consider other means of dealing with the problem. Another judge found that the national security threat posted by TikTok was “phrased in the hypothetical.” When the state of Montana tried to ban the app in 2023, a federal judge found it “oversteps state power and infringes on the constitutional rights of users,” with a “pervasive undertone of anti-Chinese sentiment.”

Trump also opened a national security review with the power to force a divestment, something Biden has continued to this day with no resolution; and last year, lawmakers looked poised to pass a bill banning TikTok, but lost steam after a high-profile grilling of its top executive. (Trump has done an about-face on the issue and recently warned that banning TikTok will only help its U.S. rivals like Meta.)

TikTok stands accused of being a conduit for the Chinese Communist Party, guzzling up sensitive user data and sending it to China. There’s not much evidence to suggest that’s true, except that their parent company ByteDance is a Chinese company, and China’s government has its so-called private sector in a chokehold. In order to stay compliant, you have to play nice.

In all of this, it’s important to remember that America is not China. America doesn't have a Great Firewall with our very own internet free from outside influences. America allows all sorts of websites that the government likes, dislikes, and fears onto our computers. So there’s an irony in allowing Chinese internet giants onto America’s internet when, of course, American companies like Google and Meta’s services aren’t allowed on Chinese computers.

And because of America’s robust speech protections under the First Amendment, the U.S. finds itself playing a different ballgame than the Chinese government in this moment. These rights protect Americans against the U.S. government, not from corporations like TikTok, Meta, YouTube, or Twitter, despite the fact that they do have outsized influence over modern communication. No, the First Amendment says that the government cannot stop you from speaking without a damned good reason. In other words, you’re protected against Congress—not TikTok.

The clearest problem with a TikTok ban is it would immediately wipe out a platform where 170 million Americans broadcast their views and receive information—sometimes about political happenings. In an era of mass polarization, shutting off the app would mean shutting down the ways in which millions of people—even those with unpopular views—speak out on issues they care about. The other problem is that Americans have the constitutional right to access all sorts of information—even if it’s deemed to be foreign propaganda. There’s been little evidence to suggest that ByteDance is influencing the flow of content at the behest of the Chinese government, though there’s some reports that are indeed worrying, including reports that TikTok censored videos related to the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibetan independence, and the banned group Falun Gong.

Still, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that Americans have the right to receive what the government deems to be foreign propaganda. In Lamont v. Postmaster General , for instance, the Court ruled that the government couldn’t halt the flow of Soviet propaganda through the mail. The Court essentially said that the act of the government stepping in and banning propaganda would be akin to censorship, and the American people need to be free to evaluate these transgressive ideas for themselves.

Further, the government has repeatedly failed to pass any federal data privacy protections that would address the supposed underlying problem of TikTok gobbling up troves of U.S. user data and handing it to a Chinese parent company. Biden only made moves in February 2024 to prevent data brokers from selling U.S. user data to foreign adversaries like China, arguably a problem much bigger than one app. But the reality is that the government has long been more interested in banning a media company than dealing with a real public policy issue.

There is legitimate concern in Washington and elsewhere that it’s not the government that controls so much of America’s speech, but private companies like those bred in Silicon Valley. But the disappearance of TikTok would further empower media monopolists like Google and Meta, who already control about half of all U.S. digital ad dollars, and give them a tighter choke hold over our communication. There’s already a paucity of platforms where people speak; removing TikTok would eliminate one of the most important alternatives we have.

Since it launched in 2016, TikTok has been the most influential social media app in the world, not because it affects public policy or necessarily creates monoculture—neither are particularly true, in fact—but because it has given people a totally different way to spend time online. In doing so, it disrupted the monopolies of American tech companies like Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and forced every rival to in some way mimic its signature style. There’s Facebook and Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight, and every other app seems to be an infinitely-scrolling video these days.

Still, Americans choose to use TikTok and their conversations will not easily port over to another platform in the event of it being banned. Instead, cutting through the connective tissue of the app will sever important ways that Americans—especially young Americans—are speaking at a time when those conversations are as rich as ever.

The reality is that if Congress wanted to solve our data privacy problems, they would solve our data privacy problems. But instead, they want to ban TikTok, so they’ve found a way to try and do so. The bill will proceed to the Senate floor, then to the president’s desk, and then it will land in the U.S. court system. At that point, our First Amendment will once again be put to the test—a free speech case that’s very much not in the abstract, but one whose results will affect 170 million Americans who just want to use an app and have their voices be heard.

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Guest Essay

Trump’s Third Act? American Gangster.

By Samuel Earle

Mr. Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over.”

In recent months, Donald Trump has been trying out a new routine. At rallies and town halls across the country, he compares himself to Al Capone. “He was seriously tough, right?” Mr. Trump told a rally in Iowa in October , in an early rendition of the act. But “he was only indicted one time; I’ve been indicted four times.” (Capone was, in fact, indicted at least six times.) The implication is not just that Mr. Trump is being unfairly persecuted but also that he is four times as tough as Capone. “If you looked at him in the wrong way,” Mr. Trump explained, “he blew your brains out."

Mr. Trump’s eagerness to invoke Capone reflects an important shift in the image he wants to project to the world. In 2016, Mr. Trump played the reality TV star and businessman who would shake up politics, shock and entertain. In 2020, Mr. Trump was the strongman, desperately trying to hold on to power by whatever means possible. In 2024, Mr. Trump is in his third act: the American gangster, heir to Al Capone — besieged by the authorities, charged with countless egregious felonies but surviving and thriving nonetheless, with an air of macho invincibility.

The evidence of Mr. Trump’s mobster pivot is everywhere. He rants endlessly about his legal cases in his stump speeches. On Truth Social, he boasts about having a bigger team of lawyers “than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!” His team has used his mug shot — taken after he was indicted on a charge of racketeering in August — on T-shirts, mugs, Christmas wrapping, bumper stickers, beer coolers and even NFTs. They’ve sold off parts of the blue suit he was wearing in that now-infamous photo for more than $4,000 a piece (it came with a dinner with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort).

Commentators have long pointed out that Mr. Trump behaves like a mob boss: The way he demands loyalty from his followers, lashes out at rivals, bullies authorities and flaunts his impunity are all reminiscent of the wiseguys Americans know so well from movies and television. As a real-estate mogul in New York, he seems to have relished working with mobsters and learned their vernacular before bringing their methods into the White House: telling James Comey, “I expect loyalty”; imploring Volodymyr Zelensky, “Do us a favor”; and pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, “Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.” But before, he downplayed the mobster act in public. Now he actively courts the comparison.

Mr. Trump’s audacious embrace of a criminal persona flies in the face of conventional wisdom. When Richard Nixon told the American public, “I am not a crook,” the underlying assumption was that voters would not want a crook in the White House. Mr. Trump is testing this assumption. It’s a canny piece of marketing. A violent mobster and a self-mythologizing millionaire, Capone sanitized his crimes by cultivating an aura of celebrity and bravery, grounded in distrust of the state and a narrative of unfair persecution. The public lapped it up. “Everybody sympathizes with him,” Vanity Fair noted of Capone in 1931, as the authorities closed in on him. “Al has made murder a popular amusement.” In similar fashion, Mr. Trump tries to turn his indictments into amusement, inviting his supporters to play along. “They’re not after me, they’re after you — I’m just standing in the way!” he says, a line that greets visitors to his website, as well.

Mr. Trump clearly hopes that his Al Capone act will offer at least some cover from the four indictments he faces. And there is a twisted logic to what he is doing: By adopting the guise of the gangster, he is able to recast his lawbreaking as vigilante justice — a subversive attempt to preserve order and peace — and transform himself into a folk hero. Partly thanks to this framing, it seems unlikely that a criminal conviction will topple his candidacy: not only because Mr. Trump has already taken so many other scandals in his stride but also because, as Capone shows, the convicted criminal can be as much an American icon as the cowboy and the frontiersman. In this campaign, Mr. Trump’s mug shot is his message — and the repeated references to Al Capone are there for anyone who needs it spelled out.

In an essay from 1948, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” the critic Robert Warshow sought to explain the unique appeal of gangster fables in American life. He saw the gangster as a quintessentially American figure, the dark shadow of the country’s sunnier self-conception. “The gangster speaks for us,” Warshow wrote, “expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life.”

It is easy to see why gangster fables appeal to so many Republican voters today. They are stories of immigrant assimilation and success, laced with anti-immigrant sentiment and rivalry. Their heroes are creatures of the big city — those nests of Republican neuroses — who tame its excesses through force but never forget God or their family along the way. In many ways, minus the murder, they are ideal conservative citizens: enterprising, loyal, distrustful of government; prone to occasional ethical lapses, but who’s perfect?

Mr. Trump knows that in America, crooks can be the good guys. When the state is seen as corrupt, the crook becomes a kind of Everyman, bravely beating the system at its own game. This is the cynical logic that the gangster and the right-wing populist share: Everyone’s as bad as anyone else, so anything goes. “A crook is a crook,” Capone once said. “But a guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician, who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he’s a thief.”

It’s a worldview powerful enough to convince voters that even the prized institutions of liberal democracy — a free press, open elections, the rule of law — are fronts in the biggest racket of them all. This conceit has a rich pedigree in reactionary politics. “Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones,” Hannah Arendt warned.

The gangster’s brutality also taps into what Warshow and others of his generation saw as the sadism in the American mind: the pleasure the public takes in seeing the gangster’s “unlimited possibility of aggression” inflicted upon others. The gangster is nothing without this license for violence, without the simple fact that, as Warshow put it, “he hurts people.” He intimidates his rivals and crushes his enemies. His cruelty is the point. The public can then enjoy “the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” “He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become,” Warshow wrote. Reverence and repulsion are all wrapped up.

Capone’s rise, demise and exalted afterlife don’t hold happy clues for Mr. Trump’s opponents. Dethroning a mob boss is never easy. “He was the 1920s version of the Teflon man; nothing stuck to him,” Deirdre Bair wrote in a 2016 biography of Capone. After he was arrested in 1931 for tax fraud, his mob continued to prosper for another half-century, and Capone himself, who was released after six and a half years in prison for health reasons and died from a stroke and pneumonia in 1947 at age 48, achieved a type of immortality. Mr. Trump will see in his story many reasons to be cheerful. “I often say Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals,” Mr. Trump said in December. It was an interesting framing: “if you like criminals”? Mr. Trump has a hunch, and it’s more than just projection, that many Americans do.

Samuel Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now

How the internet—and Stephen Colbert—hounded Kate Middleton into revealing her diagnosis

Updated at 4:04 p.m ET on March 22, 2024

For many years, the most-complained-about cover of the British satirical magazine Private Eye was the one it published in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. At the time, many people in Britain were loudly revolted by the tabloid newspapers that had hounded Diana after her divorce from Charles, and by the paparazzi whose quest for profitable pictures of the princess ended in an underpass in Paris.

Under the headline “Media to Blame,” the Eye cover carried a photograph of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace, with three speech bubbles. The first was: “The papers are a disgrace.” The next two said: “Yeah, I couldn’t get one anywhere” and “Borrow mine, it’s got a picture of the car.” People were furious. Sacks of angry, defensive mail arrived for days afterward, and several outlets withdrew the magazine from sale. (I am an Eye contributor, and these events have passed into office legend.) But with the benefit of hindsight, the implication was accurate: Intruding on the private lives of the royals is close to a British tradition. We Britons might have the occasional fit of remorse, but that doesn’t stop us. And now, because of the internet, everyone else can join in too.

Read: Just asking questions about Kate Middleton

That cover instantly sprang to mind when, earlier today, the current Princess of Wales announced that she has cancer. In a video recorded on Wednesday in Windsor, the former Kate Middleton outlined her diagnosis in order to put an end to weeks of speculation, largely incubated online but amplified and echoed by mainstream media outlets, about the state of her health and marriage.

Kate has effectively been bullied into this statement, because the alternative—a wildfire of gossip and conspiracy theories—was worse. So please, let’s not immediately switch into maudlin recriminations about how this happened. It happened because people felt they had the right to know Kate’s private medical information. The culprits may include three staff members at the London hospital that treated her, who have been accused of accessing her medical records, perhaps driven by the same curiosity that has lit up my WhatsApp inbox for weeks. Everyone hates the tabloid papers, until they become them.

In her statement, Kate said that after her abdominal surgery earlier in the year, which the press was told at the time was “planned”—a word designed to minimize its seriousness—later tests revealed an unspecified cancer. She is now undergoing “preventative chemotherapy,” but has not revealed the progression of the disease, or her exact prognosis. “I am well,” she said, promising that she is getting stronger every day. “I hope you will understand that as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment.”

This news will surely make many people feel bad. The massive online guessing game about the reasons for Kate’s invisibility seems far less fun now. Stephen Colbert’s “spilling the tea” monologue , which declared open season on the princess’s marriage, should probably be quietly interred somewhere. The sad simplicity of today’s statement, filmed on a bench with Kate in casual jeans and a striped sweater, certainly gave me pause. She mentioned the difficulty of having to “process” the news, as well as explaining her condition to her three young children in terms they could understand. The reference to the importance of “having William by my side” was pointed, given how much of the speculation has gleefully dwelt on the possibility that she was leaving him or vice versa.

Read: The eternal scrutiny of Kate Middleton

However, the statement also reveals that the online commentators who suggested that the royal household was keeping something from the public weren’t entirely wrong. Kate’s condition was described as noncancerous when her break from public life was announced in late January . The updated diagnosis appears to have been delivered in February, around the time her husband, Prince William, abruptly pulled out of speaking at a memorial service for the former king of Greece. Today’s statement represents a failure of Kensington Palace to control the narrative: first, by publishing a photograph of Kate and her children that was so obviously edited that photo agencies retracted it, and second, by giving its implicit permission for the publication of a grainy video of the couple shopping in Windsor over the weekend. Neither of those decisions quenched the inferno raging online—in fact, they fed it.

Some will say that Kate has finally done what she should have done much earlier: directly address the rumors in an official video, rather than drip-feed images that raised more questions than they answered. King Charles III has taken a different approach to his own (also unspecified) cancer, allowing footage to be filmed of him working from home. But then again, Kate has cancer at 42, is having chemo, and has three young children. Do you really have it in you to grade her media strategy and find it wanting?

Ironically, Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint; as I wrote earlier this month , they declined to publish the first paparazzi pictures of Kate taken after her withdrawal from public life. They have weighted their decisions toward respect and dignity—more so than the Meghan stans, royal tea-spillers, and KateGate theorists, who have generated such an unstoppable wave of interest in this story that its final destination was a woman with cancer being forced to reveal her diagnosis. If you ever wanted proof that the “mainstream media” are less powerful than ever before, this video of Kate Middleton sitting on a bench is it.

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The New Judge Shopping Fix Has Two Huge Loopholes

If you’ve been paying attention to the legal system recently, you’ve probably heard the term “forum shopping.” It’s usually invoked to criticize plaintiffs who file cases in places that don’t have a strong connection to the dispute: say, a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by a railroad worker who was exposed to asbestos in Ohio and Virginia.

But defendants forum shop too. By raising objections under technical doctrines of jurisdiction and venue, they can try to move cases to courts where they’ll have a better chance of winning. Think: Apple or Google seeking to move a patent infringement lawsuit filed in the Texas cities of Waco and Marshall, where, combined, over a third of the nation’s patent cases are filed, to their home base of Northern California.

Hold on. Did we just say that a third of all patent cases are filed in two small cities in Texas? We did, and it’s true.

Why do patent owners forum shop into those Texas federal courts? Because, as we’ve explained in a series of law review articles , the rules for assigning cases there allow plaintiffs to judge shop. Specifically, all cases filed in Waco were, before a recent change, assigned to a single judge—Alan Albright. Ditto for Marshall, where 90 percent of cases went to Judge Rodney Gilstrap.

Judges like Albright and Gilstrap have advertised to anyone who will listen that they want to bring patent cases to their courtrooms. (In contrast to forum shopping, judicial efforts to attract cases might be thought of as forum selling .) To bring cases in, the judges slant procedures and rulings to blatantly favor patent owners.

Many of the infringement lawsuits filed in Texas are weak on the merits; if the Texas courts weren’t so favorable for patent owners, many of the suits probably wouldn’t be filed at all. And the patent owners filing cases in Texas are primarily nonpracticing entities (pejoratively, “ patent trolls ”)—entities that don’t make anything and exist only to assert patents.

Bankruptcy is another area in which judge shopping has caused problems: courts with predictable case assignments in Delaware, Texas, and New York have openly appealed to what legal scholar Lynn LoPucki calls “case placers”—the executives and lawyers of the bankrupt company who hope the judge will reward them with a sweetheart compensation deal and high professional fees.

More recently, Republican state attorneys general and far-right advocacy groups have been shopping for judges in cases challenging the actions of the Biden administration. High-profile lawsuits about the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, the rescission of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy, protections for transgender workers, and many more have all been filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, because a single judge hears nearly every case filed there.

That judge is Matthew Kacsmaryk. Before his appointment by former President Donald Trump, Kacsmaryk worked for a right-wing organization, the First Liberty Institute, that purports to help protect religious freedom.

Judge shopping has caused mayhem in all of these cases in all of these courts.

Fortunately, last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States (a group of judges that oversees the operation of the federal courts) issued a press release and guidance document touting the conference’s “strengthen[ing of] the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit.”

Under the “strengthened policy,” certain cases will now be randomly assigned among all the judges of a district, not simply the subset of judges (or a single judge) sitting in the specific place the case was filed.

But there are two crucial problems with the policy.

First, the randomization policy applies only to “civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions.” That is, the politically charged cases that are landing before Kacsmaryk—not patent cases and certainly not bankruptcy cases.

Second, the policy is just that: a policy, not a rule .

In fact, a group of Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has written a letter to district court judges suggesting that they ignore the policy. That seems like a real possibility, particularly in courts that have benefited from judge shopping and forum selling, such as Kacsmaryk’s district, the Northern District of Texas, in which 10 of its 11 active judges were appointed by Republican presidents (and six were appointed by Trump).

The Judicial Conference itself seems to doubt whether it has the authority to mandate how district courts assign cases, citing a federal statute giving the power of case assignment to the district courts themselves and noting the “wide latitude” and “flexibility” courts have in designing case assignment systems. Indeed, Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5 th Circuit (the court that hears appeals arising from cases in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) has suggested that the conference’s policy conflicts with that federal statute and, like McConnell and other Republicans, has urged judges to ignore the policy.

The exclusion of patent cases from the policy is also odd and disappointing. After all, the issue of judge shopping was first brought to the Judicial Conference’s attention in a letter , written by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Thom Tillis, specifically about patent cases. (That letter relied heavily on our scholarship identifying and criticizing the judge shopping phenomenon.)

The Judicial Conference’s guidance document does encourage district courts to “avoid case assignment practices that result in the likelihood that a case will be assigned to a particular judge” in all civil cases, including patent cases. But again, that guidance isn’t binding.

Basically, the Judicial Conference seems to be saying: Judge shopping is bad, district courts shouldn’t assign cases in ways that allow it, but there’s nothing we can really do about it. That’s an unfortunately toothless approach to a serious problem. It’s also a crabbed view of the group’s statutory authority to “prescribe general rules of practice and procedure … in the United States district courts.”

All that said, it’s encouraging that the conference has judge shopping in its sights. It’s possible future reform will come. And it should. The federal courts are facing a crisis of legitimacy, largely because of the radical political agenda pursued by Trump-appointed judges from the district courts all the way up to the Supreme Court. Ending judge shopping would restore at least some semblance of neutrality to the court system.

Scribbr Citation Generator

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Cite any page or article with a single click right from your browser. The extension does the hard work for you by automatically grabbing the title, author(s), publication date, and everything else needed to whip up the perfect citation.

Perfectly formatted references every time

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Generate flawless citations according to the official APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard style, or many other rules.

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When your reference list is complete, export it to Word. We’ll apply the official formatting guidelines automatically.

Lists and folders

Create separate reference lists for each of your assignments to stay organized. You can also group related lists into folders.

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Change the typeface used for your reference list to match the rest of your document. Options include Times New Roman, Arial, and Calibri.

Industry-standard technology

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• Introduction
• Finding sources

Evaluating sources

• Integrating sources

Citing sources

Tools and resources, a quick guide to working with sources.

Working with sources is an important skill that you’ll need throughout your academic career.

It includes knowing how to find relevant sources, assessing their authority and credibility, and understanding how to integrate sources into your work with proper referencing.

This quick guide will help you get started!

Finding relevant sources

Sources commonly used in academic writing include academic journals, scholarly books, websites, newspapers, and encyclopedias. There are three main places to look for such sources:

• Research databases: Databases can be general or subject-specific. To get started, check out this list of databases by academic discipline . Another good starting point is Google Scholar .
• Your institution’s library: Use your library’s database to narrow down your search using keywords to find relevant articles, books, and newspapers matching your topic.
• Other online resources: Consult popular online sources like websites, blogs, or Wikipedia to find background information. Be sure to carefully evaluate the credibility of those online sources.

When using academic databases or search engines, you can use Boolean operators to refine your results.

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In academic writing, your sources should be credible, up to date, and relevant to your research topic. Useful approaches to evaluating sources include the CRAAP test and lateral reading.

CRAAP is an abbreviation that reminds you of a set of questions to ask yourself when evaluating information.

• Currency: Does the source reflect recent research?
• Relevance: Is the source related to your research topic?
• Authority: Is it a respected publication? Is the author an expert in their field?
• Accuracy: Does the source support its arguments and conclusions with evidence?
• Purpose: What is the author’s intention?

Lateral reading

Lateral reading means comparing your source to other sources. This allows you to:

• Verify evidence
• Contextualize information
• Find potential weaknesses

If a source is using methods or drawing conclusions that are incompatible with other research in its field, it may not be reliable.

Integrating sources into your work

Once you have found information that you want to include in your paper, signal phrases can help you to introduce it. Here are a few examples:

Following the signal phrase, you can choose to quote, paraphrase or summarize the source.

• Quoting : This means including the exact words of another source in your paper. The quoted text must be enclosed in quotation marks or (for longer quotes) presented as a block quote . Quote a source when the meaning is difficult to convey in different words or when you want to analyze the language itself.
• Paraphrasing : This means putting another person’s ideas into your own words. It allows you to integrate sources more smoothly into your text, maintaining a consistent voice. It also shows that you have understood the meaning of the source.
• Summarizing : This means giving an overview of the essential points of a source. Summaries should be much shorter than the original text. You should describe the key points in your own words and not quote from the original text.

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a source, you must include a citation crediting the original author.

Citing your sources is important because it:

• Allows you to avoid plagiarism
• Establishes the credentials of your sources
• Backs up your arguments with evidence
• Allows your reader to verify the legitimacy of your conclusions

The most common citation styles are APA, MLA, and Chicago style. Each citation style has specific rules for formatting citations.

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Scribbr offers tons of tools and resources to make working with sources easier and faster. Take a look at our top picks:

• Citation Generator: Automatically generate accurate references and in-text citations using Scribbr’s APA Citation Generator, MLA Citation Generator , Harvard Referencing Generator , and Chicago Citation Generator .
• Plagiarism Checker : Detect plagiarism in your paper using the most accurate Turnitin-powered plagiarism software available to students.
• AI Proofreader: Upload and improve unlimited documents and earn higher grades on your assignments. Try it for free!
• Paraphrasing tool: Avoid accidental plagiarism and make your text sound better.
• Grammar checker : Eliminate pesky spelling and grammar mistakes.
• Summarizer: Read more in less time. Distill lengthy and complex texts down to their key points.
• AI detector: Find out if your text was written with ChatGPT or any other AI writing tool. ChatGPT 2 & ChatGPT 3 supported.
• Proofreading services : Have a human editor improve your writing.
• Citation checker: Check your work for citation errors and missing citations.
• Knowledge Base : Explore hundreds of articles, bite-sized videos, time-saving templates, and handy checklists that guide you through the process of research, writing, and citation.