What's a Properly Cited Reference?

Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Many assignments in this class require that you cite your references. This is easy if you are citing a book or traditional journal article--for instance, our book would be:

Belk, C. and V. B. Maier. 2012. Biology: Science for Life, Fourth Edition. Benjamin-Cummings.

Correctly citing a website, however, often confuses students. Here are examples of both complete and incomplete citations:

Complete:

"MLA Style." Write Source. 2008. http://www.thewritesource.com/mla. (Downloaded March 18, 2008.)

Incomplete:

  1. http://www.thewritesource.com/mla
  2. Write Source, accessed 14 January 2014
  3. "MLA Style." Write Source. 2008. http://www.thewritesource.com/mla.

In general, the information required in a full citation of a website is:

Author [if known]. "Title." Last date updated or revised [if known]. URL (web address) of page. (Date page was accessed).

In this course, we are not so much concerned about how you punctuate your list of references, but you should include all of the above information (along with a working hyperlink) in your reference.

 

OU Logo
Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003
Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015.
biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.)
Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM

CAS online logo