 Hello, and welcome to this brief video on citation from York University Libraries. Citing your sources is a crucial part of academic practice, but what is citation doing for your work and how do you write one? When you cite your sources, you're showing your reader all the ideas you've quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise used in your work. Citing your sources shows the strength of your argument by acknowledging how it builds on previous knowledge. In academia, the idea of the scholarly communication life cycle describes how new ideas are created from previous ones. This is the essence of citation. Research, write, review, and repeat. Making the connections between your work and the work done by others explicit via citation shows that you understand the scholarly landscape of your topic and helps readers see the connection between authors. There are lots of different citation styles, and they differ slightly based on discipline. For example, APA is used mainly in the social sciences, MLA is used in the humanities, Chicago is the preferred style for history scholars, and IEEE and CSE are examples of citation styles used in STEM. While stylistically different, citation styles all contain two major elements, in-text citation, where you add your evidence or support, and your references or bibliography section, where you provide additional details that help your reader verify and locate your sources. This includes crucial publication information such as author, publication date, and publisher. Each citation style has its own published guide outlining how to format your citations. There are also tons of useful citation guides available online, such as York's Spark Guide or the Owlip Purdue. If you have any questions about citation, don't hesitate to get in touch with the friendly librarians at York. You might also wish to book an appointment with our Learning Commons partners at the Writing Center for more advice on how to incorporate evidence into your writing using citation. Thank you for watching, and happy citing!