Cite and Organise Your Sources

Why citing matters

Citing gives credit to other people's work, lets your reader check your evidence, and protects you from plagiarism: presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own. Plagiarism can happen by accident, from a copied sentence you forgot to reference, so good habits matter.

You must cite when you use someone's words (a quote), ideas (even in your own words) or data (a statistic, a chart). You don't need to cite common knowledge, like "Abuja is the capital of Nigeria".

Quote, paraphrase or summarise

• Quote: the exact words, in quotation marks, with a citation. Use sparingly.
• Paraphrase: the idea in your own words and sentence structure, with a citation. Changing a few words isn't enough.
• Summarise: the main points of a longer source, briefly, with a citation.

Use your department's style

Your department will name a referencing style. APA and Harvard are common in Nigerian universities. Both have an in-text citation and a reference list at the end. In APA 7th edition:

In the text:

Mobile money use grew quickly among small traders (Adeyemi, 2023).

In the reference list:

Adeyemi, T. (2023). Mobile money and small business growth in Lagos.
    Journal of African Business Studies, 12(2), 45–61.

The example author and journal above are made up to show the format. Always follow the exact style guide your department gives you, because details like commas and italics matter.

Let a tool do the formatting

A reference manager saves sources and formats citations for you:

• Zotero (free, zotero.org): install the browser extension, click it on any article page to save the source, then insert citations into Word or Google Docs in your chosen style.
• Google Scholar's "Cite" button gives a ready-formatted reference for any article. Check it, since it sometimes gets details wrong.
• Word's References tab can also store sources and build a reference list.

Stay organised

• Save each source as soon as you find it, with a note on why it's useful.
• Keep one folder per assignment for PDFs and notes.
• Build the reference list as you write, not the night before the deadline.

Try it

1. Install Zotero and its browser extension (or use Google Scholar's Cite button).
2. Save three real sources for a topic you're working on.
3. Write one paraphrased sentence from one source, with an in-text citation in your department's style.
4. Generate the reference list for all three and check one entry against the style guide.