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SPAN 318 Latin America : Race, Nation and Social Conflict

This guide is designed to help the students in Dr. Torres-Rodriguez Fall 2024 course with their research

Why Cite Sources?

You cite your sources:

  • to give credit to those people whose ideas/words you are using in your paper so that you don't plagiarize
  • to distinguish other people's ideas/words from your own ideas and words.
  • to make your argument stronger. Doing research on an issue strengthens your position, because it shows you have engaged with some of the other positions on your topic and incorporated them into your thinking.
  • to allow your readers to verify your claims and to get more information from the source materials.

Plagiarism is presenting another person’s words and/or ideas as your own words/ideas – either deliberately OR unintentionally.

To avoid plagiarism, give credit in your paper to the person whose words and/or ideas you have made use of. In other words, cite your sources. You must cite any source that contributed significantly to the ideas in your own paper, even if you don't quote directly from that source.

MLA Style

How do I cite sources in MLA format?

MLA format is commonly used in the humanities. This is the citation style used in literature and the one Professor Garcia Blizzard wants you to use. It involves the use of parenthetical in-text citations, which means that the citation information is within parentheses beside the quoted or paraphrased information. You can get help with MLA from the following:

Citing from Databases

From MLA or Academic Search Complete (or other EBSCO databases):

 

Sep 26, 2019

 

Cite from Proquest Databases

  

From a Proquest Database:

 

 

 

Sep 26, 2019

 

Cite from Google Scholar