Tutorial: Writing Citations from Scratch

In your Check, Please! journal entries you’ve shown you know how to search for and identify markers of trustworthiness in news stories. You’ve learned to look for the publication something is from, the person who wrote or created it, and when they created it. And you’ve learned how to use Google to search for original sources based on the URL of the item.

Academic citations work in just the same way. You can, then, figure out the basics of any academic citation by looking for these same markers:

What is it named? — this is the title of the item
Who wrote or created it? — this is the author
Where was it published? — this is the publisher
When was it created? — this is the date
How do I access it? — this is the URL

Citing a Web Page

Let’s look at an example. Here’s one of the reliable articles from Lesson Two of Check, Please!:

Kohler’s Alexa Toilet Costs $8,000, Will Flush by Voice

Using the five questions above:

What is it named? — Kohler’s Alexa toilet costs $8,000, will flush by voice
Who wrote or created it? — Mike Prospero
Where was it published? — Tom’s Guide
When was it created? — January 4, 2019
How do I access it? — https://www.tomsguide.com/us/kohler-numi-alexa-toilet,news-28957.html

Now let’s create an academic citation. For this we’ll use American Psychological Association (APA) style, which is one of the two styles you’re most likely to use at SUNY Plattsburgh. (The other is Modern Language Association, MLA for short.)

Take a look at the Feinberg Library guide to APA reference lists.

First you’ll want to identify what format the item you’re trying to cite is. Is it a book, a scholarly journal article, a webpage, or something else? Then look at the guide for an example of that format.

In this case we’re citing a webpage with an individual author. The guide gives an example:

Morrison, D. (2012, September 28). Five-step strategy for student success with online learning. Online Learning Insights. https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/five-step-strategy-for-student-success-with-online-learning/

Use that as a model, and substitute in the information you have about the Alexa toilet article:

Prospero, M. (2019, January 4). Kohler’s Alexa toilet costs $8,000, will flush by voice. Tom’s Guide. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/kohler-numi-alexa-toilet,news-28957.html

Citing a YouTube Video

The same method works for most kinds of sources. Here’s a YouTube video from Check, Please! Lesson Three:

Tsunami of Toxic Sludge

Our five questions:

What is it named? — Tsunami of Toxic Sludge
Who wrote or created it? — ABC News
Where was it published? — YouTube
When was it created? — October 5, 2010
How do I access it? — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf4e7ZAc9M

The Feinberg Library guide to APA style has an example to cite a YouTube video:

East Tennessee State University. (2014, March 12). Study skills, time management & test-taking strategies for college students [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInmBkwz7KY

Just as with the Alexa toilet article, start with the guide’s formatting and substitute in the information about the toxic sludge video:

ABC News. (2010, October 5). Tsunami of toxic sludge [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf4e7ZAc9M

Citing a Scholarly Article

Peer-reviewed scholarly articles can be cited using just the same method. Let’s try an example.

I’m starting with this journal article: Unnatural inequalities: social and environmental histories. You may be asked to log in through Plattsburgh to view it.

Our five questions:

What is it named? — Unnatural inequalities: social and environmental histories
Who wrote or created it? — Alan Taylor
Where was it published? — Environmental History
When was it created? — October 1, 1996
How do I access it? — https://doi.org/10.2307/3985275

Note that for scholarly journal articles, when possible, you will use a special form of URL called a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The DOI is a unique identifier that always points back to the place of original publication. The example above is a DOI.

One other difference between citing a scholarly journal article and webpages or similar: you will need to include the volume number, issue number, and page numbers. These are conveniently given on the journal article’s webpage linked at the top of this section.

What is the volume number? — 1
What is the issue number? — 4
What are the page numbers? — 6-19 (this means the article begins on page 6 and ends on page 19)

Looking at the Feinberg Library guide to APA style, we find the following example under “Articles with DOI”:

Etzel, J. M., & Nagy, G. (2016). Students’ perceptions of person–environment fit: Do fit perceptions predict academic success beyond personality traits?. Journal of Career Assessment, 24(2), 270-288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072715580325

And just like with webpages or YouTube videos, we can use that model to create our own:

Taylor, A. (1996). Unnatural inequalities: social and environmental histories. Environmental History, 1(4), 6-19. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985275

Other Sources and Other Styles

Citations for books, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, and course materials, to name just a few, can look very different from each other. But the principles for creating a correct citation are the same. Ask the five key questions. Identify an example citation for a similar item in the Feinberg Library citation guides. Then use the example as a model to build your own.

This method works not only for APA citations, but also for MLA and Chicago Manual of Style citations. Feinberg Library also has guides to those two styles:

This work by Joshua F. Beatty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.