Citations are used constantly in writing. Whether for an academic article, blog post, or research, citations add merit and context to what we write. In addition, citations support information that may be hard to verify and give credit to authors if we use their work to help our own.
Through citations, we enhance the overall credibility and authority of what we write and provide a way for readers to connect to more research on the same topic. They also help us avoid plagiarism.
But what do online citations look like? When should we use them and when are they unnecessary? More importantly, how do we cite properly? The following points will explain the form and function of citations. Hopefully, by understanding them better, you will be able to strengthen your writing and increase your credibility as a writer.
What Do Online Citations Look Like?
You can format citations in a number of ways. However, some of the most common include academic and web citations. Academic citations are typically formatted in parentheses and follow a statement or quote in reference to another’s work.
Web citations, however, follow a slightly different format. While we still want to credit another source, we opt for links rather than a parenthetical citation.
However, it’s important to know what information should be highlighted by the link. Typically, links are only applied to the information that is directly from the source, rather than full sentences or lengthy explanations. For example, if I were to write about how many women summited Mount Everest before 2018, I could say:
Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018.
In this sentence, we would link the citation to the most relevant details so that it would read:
Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018.
Conversely, what we don’t want to do is link unnecessary information. This issue would look something like this:
Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018.
While it is the same information, narrowing down what we’ve linked to the most crucial detail cleans up our writing and makes our work look less spammy.
When Should We Use Citations?
As evidenced above, how we link our citations matters. But it really comes down to what is getting linked. More general statements do not require a link because they are typically already known.
At WritersDomain, we consider hard-to-verify information as anything that may not be well known to readers. This includes statistics (such as percentages) or seemingly surprising facts or claims. In order to decide if something is hard to verify, simply do a quick internet search to determine if the phrase you’ve included is true. Typically the information is listed at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) or within the first page of the web browser.
Using the previous example, then, that same sentence could also say: “Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, many women have successfully summited it.” Both this and the previous sentence are true. However, one version has more detailed information while the other is generalized. In the more specific example, we are citing the hard-to-verify information.
If I wrote, “Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018” without any citation to back up the claims “605 women” or the date 2018, the credibility of this statement (and, by extension, everything else in the article) would decrease.
We want readers to trust that what we say is accurate and truthful, and citing information that may not be common knowledge can help us accomplish this goal.
Why Are Only Some Citations Allowed?
Now that we know why we should include citations and how to format them, does this mean that every piece of information requires a link to a source? Put simply, no.
Remember, we only want to link citations to information that readers may not already know or anything that is not common knowledge. So, we don’t need to link a citation to information that may be helpful but doesn’t actually require a source.
For instance, continuing with the Mount Everest example, most people generally know that it is the tallest mountain in the world. So, if I were writing an article on that topic, I could make that statement without including a source.
While you could certainly find a source that confirms Mount Everest as the tallest mountain in the world, you don’t want to get overzealous. Too many links, whether to the same source or several additional sources, can actually do more harm than good because an overabundance of citations may lower the article’s SEO rating online. Consider the following example:
Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain. Many people have sought and still seek to conquer it. While there have been many men who have reached the summit, the number of women who have accomplished this feat is drastically lower. That said, though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018. For climbers in 2019, four women were from China and six were from Nepal.
We already know that the statistic of “605 women” should have a citation. But what about the rest of the paragraph? In this case, only the previous link should be included. That’s because it confirms data regarding climbers in 2018 as well as 2019. However, if that source only included data about the climbers in 2018 and did not mention anything about the ones from 2019, an additional source would be required to verify the latter information.
Conversely, what we want to avoid is having citations that look like the following:
Though Mount Everest is a daunting challenge, roughly 605 women successfully summited it before 2018. For climbers in 2019, four women were from China and six were from Nepal.
In this instance, each link leads to the same source. As such, if we were to include a citation for each detail in this manner, the article could get flagged as spam by Google or another web browser. In addition, these now superfluous outsourced links would decrease how long readers stick around to read your article, thereby rendering it less useful.
How Do Citations Benefit Writing?
More than anything, we want to provide information that is useful, trustworthy, and relevant. We also want to ensure that the information we include in our articles is strong enough that it won’t have to rely on other sources too heavily. By following the principles laid out above, you will be able to provide clean and clear content and offer your readers accurate information, all while refraining from making your work unhelpful.
By including links for hard-to-verify information, you show readers that your article is something they can turn to, thus strengthening your credibility and the likelihood that they will trust something you write in the future. In addition, by limiting links to the most crucial information, you increase your chances of having readers stick with your article.
Leave A Reply