Question about citing sources

[W_HAMILTON]

Since my teachers never answer me, I figured I'll ask you guys.

If I am writing a paper, and it is basically filled with information I researched from other sources, how should I cite the sources? I know HOW to cite them, I just don't understand whether I am supposed to literally cite a source after every sentence. For instance, if I have two pages full of statistics that I researched, after every sentence should I cite the source where I got the information? Even if it is the same source?

I don't understand this, and my teachers have never really been clear with me on it either. It seems too distracting to list sources after every sentence (especially if there is no author and you must list part of the article's title), but I don't know how else to do it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here is an example of what I am talking about.

Yadda yadda yadda (Source 1). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 2). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 3). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 1). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 4).

Is that how I would do it? As I said, it just seems so distracting to end every sentence with a citation like that, but I don't know how else to do it.

[KitchenWitch]

1. It really depends upon the style manual your teacher prefers

Here is a link to a site that shows the most popular citation styles

http://www.easybib.com/

[tjwmason]

10. Exactly.

The main methods used over here are Harvard and Oxford, whilst I have a personal preference for Oxford I would always conform to the house-style - in many cases there is a mark-weighting attached to correct use. The style used is often specified for the course as a whole.

[XemaSab]

2. If it's something obvious, such as

"Some dogs are brown," "Bermuda is in the Atlantic Ocean," and so forth, you don't need to cite a source.

The way to cite a bunch of stuff all from the same source is to say "According to Smith, Bermuda was an important source of seaweed for Victorian seaweed paintings. After the opening of Japan to outsiders, Japanese seaweed dominated the global market, but by then the fad had passed (Smith 1942)."

Or something along those lines.

[W_HAMILTON]

3. That's what I thought.

But it still seems to almost dominate the information I am trying to explain. If I start a paragraph like you suggested, "According to Smith..." could I rattle off several lines of statistics without having to reference it again? Or would that not be proper citation?

It seems like no matter what I do, the teacher is never pleased, but I can't get a straight answer on this subject.

[XemaSab]

4. When in doubt, cite

It looks unwieldy, but it's the standard.

[W_HAMILTON]

5. OK, that's what I was looking for.

So my example:

Yadda yadda yadda (Source 1). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 2). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 3). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 1). Yadda yadda yadda (Source 4).

Would be okay, correct? As you said, it looks awful and seems to disrupt the flow of the paper, but if I got information from another source, I should always cite that source in the sentence where I am referencing the statistics, correct?

I just wanted to make sure. I don't have a problem doing it this way, but I didn't want to get penalized because I was citing too much.

Thanks for your help!

[Boojatta]

9. "the teacher is never pleased, I can't get a straight answer on this subject."

Looking for an answer here seems similar to a drunk looking under a streetlight for keys that weren't dropped under the streetlight. It might be more helpful to ask people here for ways to phrase the question, so that you can ask the person whose answer matters.

[demmiblue]

6. If you have several sentences that are paraphrased (not quoted) from a single source...

you can put the citation after that group of sentences. If you insert your own thoughts/conclusions and then use that same source in subsequent sentences, you then have to cite that source again. If they are direct quotations, then you would cite the source for each sentence.That is how I learned it!

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. If it's all just statistics (say, survey results or lab tests or whatever), the easiest way is:

Begin your chapter with something like:

The data in this chapter are gathered from the following sources: Falcon(1), Hemmingworth(2), Kleptorepublicanshitbag(3), Agamemnon(4), and Gaius Maximus(5). Instead of footnoting everything specifically, they will be labeled by author's name.

And then, in the those footnotes, explain what the papers/research/whatever it is, such as:

1. "Republicans Do Steal More Shit Than Illegal Immigrants, Mexicans, Blacks, and Muslims Combined, Contrary to What they Say on FOX TV, Thus Proving that self-identified Republicans Are Psychotic Lying Shitbags", Journal of Modern Psychiatric Research, August 2008, p.41-12869.

Then, whenever you bring up a batch of data, you can just put the data's author in parentheses, and don't have to keep footnoting which particular graph or table on whatever specific page that particular data came from.

Like this: Republicans lied an average of 4 times every 5 seconds on FOX TV in the run-up to the elections (Falcon), and Sarah Palin topped a whopping rate of one lie per word (Hemmingworth). As seen in the following table from Gaius Maximus, there are more lies per hour on FOX News than there are bicuspids in living people on planet earth, and more unethical acts initiated by Republicans every hour than there were pop tabs pulled on soda cans from 1957-1985.

(Table whatever from Gaius Maximus, who clearly has a dental fetish or just a savoring of useless comparisons)





And so on.

[W_HAMILTON]

8. Hah.

I like your method, too :)