What is citation?Citation is a way of backing up your claims, and at the same time providing a context to the information you bring up. Good citation lends credibility to your argument and is essential to being able to offer the person reading your posts evidence. The less well-known your claim, or the more incredible- the better citation's you'll need. Below I'll discuss some general rules for when to cite your sources, what kind of sources you want to cite, and a recommended format for citing them.

So....when do I cite? Generally speaking, you need to cite something if you are quoting (or paraphrasing) someone else, use someone else's ideas, or mention a fact that isn't generally common knowledge. For example, you won't usually need to cite a source that tells you the years someone was president of the U.S. Or that evolution works by the mechanism of natural selection. On the other hand, if you want to say that in his term as President Harry Truman used many more wiretaps than Richard Nixon ever could have dreamed of, or that it is generally believed that viruses are the result of broken organelles in cells you had better cite a source.

A rule of thumb (and it's just a rule of thumb, mind you) is if you learned it before high-school it probably doesn't need a citation.