Webpages expire, books and articles get lost, photographs and films degrade. Citations are necessary to assure that the next researcher can find the same information through different means.
Citing is important for your scholarly credibility, and for building on previous research. You may have a good idea, but simply stating it does not make it true or believable. Give your ideas validity and support by citing established authors.
Avoiding plagiarism is key to academic honesty. Claiming someone's original work as your own is fraud. Citations give authors their due credit.
Having trouble formatting your citations? Use these tools to automatically generate citations for books, journal articles, newspapers and more in APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.