Citing Sources

Once students reach high school, they will be writing more papers than in their previous grades.  Be certain that your high school students are familiar with the three most common ways of citing sources when writing papers.

  • Parenthetical citations.  Key information that identifies the source is provided in parentheses after the cited information.  For a book, the information is the author`s last name and the page number the information is found.
  • Endnotes. Each direct quote, paraphrase, or summary is marked with a superscript number.  The citations are provided at the end of the paper with corresponding number for each.
  • Footnotes.  As for endnotes, footnotes are created by tagging each direct quote, paraphrase, or summary with a superscript number.  The citations are provided at the bottom (i.e., foot) of the page of the paper on which they appear.  They are listed in order of superscript number.