 Welcome to the Kirkwood Community College Library's Help Anytime video series. I'm Kate Hess, librarian at Kirkwood. Imagine this scene. It's a dark and stormy evening and your friend says to you, it's going to be a great day for a picnic tomorrow. Where did you hear that? You ask. On the six o'clock news. Whether you realize it or not, you've just asked your friend to cite the source of the information they just shared and they've provided an informal citation. This citation helps you understand why your friend is suggesting a picnic when it's storming outside and helps you determine how likely it is that the next day will actually be great picnic weather. It would also let you verify that your friend didn't misunderstand or misinform you by giving you a place to double-check the facts. Citing sources is done often in college work but is done formally and following a specific style. Citing is a practice that first allows you to clearly let your audience know where you gathered the information you used in creating your writing, speech, website, or any other communication. Second, it helps support your ideas and arguments to show the work of experts is standing behind you. And third, if you don't document where you got your information, your work will be considered plagiarism and major academic offense. A quick note on terminology. Many different terms are used by different people when talking about citing. Some of these terms have distinct meanings and others are simply different terms that mean the same thing. Here's a rundown of the most common terms. First term, citing. It may also be called documentation. These are both general terms that refer to the whole process of telling your audience exactly where your information came from. To cite properly there are two elements that work together. The in-text citations and the work cited. Second term, in-text citations. These are also called parenthetical references. These little bits of shorthand do three things. First, they give you a way to acknowledge the source where you found the information you just used. Second, they point your readers to the specific page where they could find that particular idea or quotation. Third, the in-text citation refers your reader to the corresponding entry in your work cited page where they can find the details they need to locate that source. Third term, work cited. This may also be called a bibliography or references. It refers to the list found at the end of your paper that has the complete entry for each information source you cite. So, when you cite your sources, it's a combination of these two closely related parts. The work cited page which appears at the end and the in-text citations which are scattered throughout your work. In fact, when you create the in-text citation, it's like snapping off the first part of your work cited list citation and plugging it right into the text of your paper. You'll learn more about how to create work cited and in-text citations in the next videos in this series. That's the basics. Now test your understanding before moving on to the next video.