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Politics of Identity: POLS 0832

Why Cite?

index card with citation notes

Index Card by Reeding Lessons, February 3, 2007 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)


Question: Why cite sources?

Answer: Citing the sources you use supports your ideas, validates your argument, gives credit to the originator of the idea, leads readers to additional information about your topic, and helps prevent plagiarism.

Creating an Annotated Bibliography

Need help creating annotated bibliographies? Below are a few sources that help explain what should be included in the annotations:

Chicago Manual of Style basics

Chicago Manual of Style Online Full-text of Chicago Manual of Style

Color-Coded Citation Guide for Chicago Style (.pdf file) Brief outline of reference format from the Temple University Writing Center

Example of an Annotation

A good annotation summarizes and evaluates each source. In the example below, notice how the student does the following:

  • discusses the writer's background/credability
  • describes the content of the source
  • describes the usefulness of the source
  • describes the intended audience
  • describes his/her reaction

London, Herbert. "Five Myths of the Television Age." Television Quarterly 10 (1) Spring 1982: 81-89.

Herbert London, the Dean of Journalism at New York University and author of several books and articles, explains how television contradicts five commonly believed ideas. He uses specific examples of events seen on television, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, to illustrate his points. His examples have been selected to contradict such truisms as: "seeing is believing"; "a picture is worth a thousand words"; and "satisfaction is its own reward." London uses logical arguments to support his ideas which are his personal opinion. He doesn't refer to any previous works on the topic; however, for a different point of view, one should refer to Joseph Patterson's, "Television is Truth" (The Journal of Television 45 (6) November/December 1995: 120-135). London's style and vocabulary would make the article of interest to any reader. The article clearly illustrates London's points, but does not explore their implications, leaving the reader with many unanswered questions.

The above example is adapted from Memorial University Libraries' "How to Write Annotated Bibliographies."