Introduction to Documentation

Because research papers are developed from source material, it becomes necessary for the writer to acknowledge his or her dependance on that source material. This is necessary for several reasons:

Documentation, then, tells readers how to find exact copies of the sources used, where in those sources to find the information or ideas used, and whether the information or ideas used are being quoted exactly as they appear in the original or whether they are being reworded or summarized by the writer of the research paper.

Different disciplines have their own ways of formatting documentation. Students entering a professional discipline become familiar with the documentation style common to that discipline.Two common documentation styles: APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association).

Regardless of the style manual, all documentation styles include three things (which may be formatted very differently from one style manual to another):

Works Cited

The Works Cited page of a research paper provides the information required in order for the reader to find an exact copy of each of the original sources used by the researcher. Original sources can be of a variety of types: books; articles in reference books; magazine, newspaper, or journal articles; web sites; articles reprinted on the Internet that originally appeared in print sources; and so on. There is a unique format style for each different type of source. In general, all MLA format styles have three sections: Author. Title. Publication information. Depending on the source, these three sections can look radically different.

For instance, the title section of a book like Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is the title of the book itself. However, the title section of an article from a magazine is the article title and not the magazine title. The magazine title belongs to the publication information. Very few people can recall all of the details of the various ways to format citations. That is why style books are written.

In order to properly format your research paper citations according to MLA style, refer to the MLA section of the handbook assigned to the class or to other citation guides available from the Internet or your library for the particular type of source you are documenting.

Important note: A research paper must include documentation for every source used, whether or not the source is quoted in the research paper. In other words, everything and anything which you have read that has helped you write the paper, whether you have quoted it, summarized or paraphrased information from it, or just used an idea from it, must be included in your documentation.

Annotated Bibliographies

An annotated bibliography is very similar to a Works Cited page. While the Works Cited page lists just those sources actually used in a paper, an annotated bibliography may also lists works which were consulted but, for one reason or another, were not actually used in the research paper. The annotated bibliography will be formatted in the same documentation style as the research paper.

The most noticeable difference between a works cited page and an annotated bibliography is that an annotated bibliography includes a brief note about the source (annotated means to make a note about something). These notes can serve a variety of purposes. Sometimes they indicate the relative value of sources or how the sources will be used in the research paper. Sometimes the annotations may indicate special features about the source that would be useful to someone researching the same topic, for instance, actual photographs of material, or firsthand accounts, or perhaps graphs and tables that make the subject clearer. Sometimes the annotations indicate the quality of the source: a reference to the sources used in the source, the reputation and experience of the author of the source, and so on.

Internal Citations

One purpose of documentation is to acknowledge the sources used. The Works Cited page of a research paper provides the information required in order for the reader to find an exact copy of each of the original sources used by the researcher. An internal citation points back to the source on the Works Cited page which is being used and tells where in that source to find the information, ideas, or words used.

In the past, students had to learn complicated rules for footnotes. Most style manuals now use internal parenthetical citations, which are placed in parenthetical expressions inside the paragraph being documented. In MLA, the format of a citation is usually the author's last name and a page number. If the source does not list an author, the title of the source is used. For electronic sources, like web pages or full text article reprints, page numbers are not used since each person printing the article could end up with different page breaks. In those cases, sometimes paragraph numbers are used. To differentiate paragraph numbers from page numbers, paragraph numbers are preceded by the abbreviation par. So, if page 7 is used in a source by someone named Martin, the internal citation (also called "parenthetical documentation" or "tag") would be (Martin 7). If paragraph 12 is used from a Website titled George Washington Carver, Botanist which does not list an author, the internal citation (also called "parenthetical documentation" or "tag") would be (George Washington Carver, Botanist, par. 12).

Generally, every paragraph in a research paper will have at least one internal citation. A paragraph that does not contain any citations cannot contain any information, ideas, or words taken from any source. A single citation in a paragraph indicates that everything in that paragraph from the beginning of the paragraph to the citation has been taken from the source and page (or paragraph) cited.