Lesson: Citation Conventions

Go to the library's tutorial on citations and read the "Introduction" and "Why We Cite" sections:

http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/citations/index.html?page=why

STOP WHEN YOU GET TO SECTION ON APA 

Good citations accomplish the following goals:

• They allow you to show how your argument is built upon the ideas of others. 
• They allow you to indicate which ideas are taken from others, and from whom those ideas were taken; in other words, to give credit where it's due. 
• They allow the interested reader to follow your argument and confirm its logic by investigating the ideas on which the argument is built, or to further explore those ideas on their own.