The internet has made researching papers easier than ever. In a matter of a few minutes, you can have a sheaf of articles and book excerpts on your chosen topic, ready to be turned into a killer research paper. However, with so much information readily available and easy to search for, it's even more important than ever to make sure you properly cite your sources. This article is all about citations, including footnotes and endnotes and what could happen to you if you skip this crucial step in the paper writing process.

There are several different ways to do citations and the method you use will largely be determined by personal preference. If you're writing the article for the Trinity Family Dental Whitby clinic, or for a popular university, it will be the personal preference of your professor or employer. If you're writing it for a particular journal, they may have a standard that you need to adhere to. Always check which method is requested before you do your citations. The three most common types of citations are footnotes, endnotes, and in-line citations, also known as the MLA method.

Footnotes are the least obtrusive method of citation. In a footnote, any fact or phrase you wish to attribute to another source has a small number in superscript at the end of it which corresponds to a number at the bottom of the page where the source is identified. If you don't wish to crowd the bottom of your pages with listings of mortgage sources, you can put them all at the end of your paper. Then they're called end notes. In in-line citations, the source is identified in shorthand in brackets after the statement. In all cases, the notes are supported by a full bibliography at the end of your paper of cited and uncited sources you used in your research.

Many people don't understand what they should and should not cite. Basically, any fact or figure that is not common knowledge should be cited as well as any direct quotes from other works. If at any point you have a phrase about the value of condos where someone reading it might say: "hey, how do you know that?" you should add a citation. Your citation should include the author's name, the name of the book or article, the publisher's name, the date and location of publication, and the page on which the information appears.

If you fail to do your citations, you are representing someone else's research or writings about a topic as your own. This is called plagiarism and it is illegal. In severe cases you can be sued and even minor cases can get you suspended or expelled from school. These types of severe consequences don't happen if you simply miss one citation or make an honest mistake in the citations.