Citing, referencing, and checking sources
Most citation guidance explains the format. These pages answer the judgment calls: what actually needs a source, where the marker belongs, whether you may cite something you only read about, and how to tell if the source says what you claim it says.
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Citation questions arrive at the worst moment. You are mid-paragraph, the sentence is nearly right, and you cannot decide whether the claim needs a source, which source it needs, or whether the marker goes after the clause or after the sentence. Style guides answer the formatting question and stop.
The pages below answer the judgment calls instead. Each one takes a single situation, gives the ruling in the first paragraph, and then explains the reasoning so you can apply it to the next case rather than searching again.
A theme runs through most of them. Citation is not decoration attached to a finished sentence. It is a claim about where knowledge came from, and the strength of your writing depends on that claim being exactly true. A citation that supports the general area of your sentence but not its specific assertion is the most common flaw in graduate writing, and it is the one an examiner finds fastest.
Do I need to cite absolutely everything in a thesis?
Whether every sentence in a thesis needs a citation, what counts as common knowledge in your field, and whether it is possible to cite too much.
Read the answer →Where should a citation go when only one clause in a sentence needs support?
Where the citation marker belongs when only part of a sentence comes from a source, whether to repeat it every sentence, and how to attribute a paragraph.
Read the answer →Should I cite the paper I read or the original study it references?
Whether to cite the paper you actually read or the original study it references, when an as cited in citation is acceptable, and what goes in the reference list.
Read the answer →Can I cite a paper I cannot get hold of?
What to do about a paywalled or unavailable paper you need to cite, the legitimate ways to get a copy, and how to cite it if you genuinely cannot read it.
Read the answer →Is citing a review instead of the original research bad practice?
Whether citing a review article instead of the primary studies is acceptable, when a review is the right citation, and how many sources a broad claim needs.
Read the answer →What do I do when a paper's cited source does not support its claim?
What to do when a paper's citation does not support the claim attached to it, how far back through a citation chain to check, and whether you can use the claim.
Read the answer →How do I check that every claim in my thesis is supported by its citation?
How to verify that every claim in a thesis is supported by its source, what a claim-level audit looks like, and whether an abstract can support a claim.
Read the answer →How do I fix a sentence that describes a study's result too broadly?
How to fix a sentence that describes a study's result too broadly, which parts of a claim drift away from the evidence, and how to hedge without sounding unsure.
Read the answer →Do I use the journal page number or the PDF page number in a citation?
Which page number belongs in a citation when the PDF numbering differs, whether paraphrases need page numbers, and how to cite a source that has no pages at all.
Read the answer →How do I quote a source in another language in an English thesis?
How to quote a non-English source in an English thesis, whether to give the original or the translation or both, and how to cite a translation you made yourself.
Read the answer →How much self-citation is acceptable?
How much self-citation is acceptable in a paper or thesis, whether editors and reviewers flag it, and how to cite your own unpublished or in-progress work.
Read the answer →Should I use Zotero or Mendeley for a PhD?
How to choose between Zotero and Mendeley for doctoral work, how to migrate a library from one to the other, and how to stop duplicate references accumulating.
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