Parenthetical citations are sources listed within the body of the paper authenticating information found in the paper.

You must state your source for any information that you learned through researching. When you use a parenthetical citation you are giving credit to your sources. This lends believability and authority to your own work. Remember that you are writing non-fiction which is information with details. Citing the source of those details makes your paper more credible. Your reader can search out your source for further understanding.

If you are using someone else's words or ideas, you must give credit to the person who thought up the idea or said the words even if you have rewritten those ideas into your own words. Failure to do this is plagiary.

You should use parenthetical citations if you include:

• a direct quotation that someone said in a book - see example
• word for word inclusions or paraphrases - see example
• original or interesting ideas that are not your own - see example
• statistics, facts, figures, definitions - see example
• illustrations such as diagrams, maps, tables - see example

You do not need to credit generally well-known facts such as George Washington was the first President of the United States.

1 Enclose the citation in parentheses. Use author's or editor's last name and page. Separate author's name and page by a space, not a comma. Do not use p. or pg. End punctuation follows the parentheses.

EXAMPLE: The Japanese had thirty one ships including six aircraft carriers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, and eight tankers (Smith 45). They had few to no damage or casualties.

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2. Place the citation immediately after your quote or paraphrase containing the

information. If you write an entire paragraph and all the information came from the same page of a book, then the citation may go at the end of the paragraph.

EXAMPLE: "It made me realize as nothing else that war had come to Hawaii (Prange 168)," said Lieutenant Commander Charles Coe, a war planes' officer at Pearl Harbor.

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3. Use (page) when citing a source for the second time immediately after the first.

EXAMPLE: They also had 432 planes, thirty nine of which were for combat patrol, fourty for reserve, and 353 for the raid (45).

4. If there is no author, then use a shortened title.

EXAMPLE: This theory explains why the United States was unprepared (World Book).

5. When citing a source from the internet use paragraph numbers not page numbers.

EXAMPLE: Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "This day will live in infamy (Battles pars 5)."

Click here to return the WMS research sources page.

Jeanie Zoller

September, 2001