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In university, must every statement I make in my work be cited?

For an essay/dissertation/assignment?
What if the info I got was from a book or video or whatever.

Do I need to definitely have a primary source cited for everything I write?
Every sentence taken from an external source, I.e. not your own work must be cited...
Every sentence, every word, every letter, every punctuation mark, has to be referenced. Even if you have a blank piece of paper it must be referenced if you got it from a source. Basically, everything needs to be referenced regardless of whether you got it from a video or whether you got it from Hogwarts.
Original post by F.h.98
For an essay/dissertation/assignment?
What if the info I got was from a book or video or whatever.

Do I need to definitely have a primary source cited for everything I write?

Any information (whether it's a direct quote or not) which you get from another source, like a book, journal article etc. must be cited. However, you must remember to also include your own thoughts, which you don't cite.
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Avatar for Sinnoh
Sinnoh
22
Some things can be expected knowledge; e.g. I wouldn't have to cite F = ma in a lab report.

You have to know when the ideas you're writing are and aren't yours. Are you writing something down that you wouldn't have known or come with had you not read a certain article or paper? Cite it.
Pretty much, yeah. You need sources to back up your arguments and it's plagarism not to reference them, otherwise you're presenting others' work as your own. Every uni/course will have their own referencng guidelines and will show you how to reference different forms of sources, it's likely that you'd be referencing more books and journal articles rather than videos though.
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by F.h.98
For an essay/dissertation/assignment?
What if the info I got was from a book or video or whatever.

Do I need to definitely have a primary source cited for everything I write?

If you're getting information directly from a book or video, then you must cite that source. You don't say what the subject is, so it's difficult to talk about referencing more generally. In the sciences, facts need to be referenced, but 'common knowledge' does not. What exactly constitutes 'common knowledge' is not easy to define, and you sort of refine it at the beginning of your academic career. For instance, if you were writing a biological essay, you wouldn't need to reference the phrase, 'DNA is an antiparallel double helix' to Crick and Watson, because it as assumed that an educated audience reading that sort of an essay would know this - it would be common knowledge. However, for a more general audience, or if you went into great detail about how the structure of DNA was elucidated, then a reference would be appropriate.
Reply 7
Avatar for F.h.98
F.h.98
OP
13
Original post by Reality Check
If you're getting information directly from a book or video, then you must cite that source. You don't say what the subject is, so it's difficult to talk about referencing more generally. In the sciences, facts need to be referenced, but 'common knowledge' does not. What exactly constitutes 'common knowledge' is not easy to define, and you sort of refine it at the beginning of your academic career. For instance, if you were writing a biological essay, you wouldn't need to reference the phrase, 'DNA is an antiparallel double helix' to Crick and Watson, because it as assumed that an educated audience reading that sort of an essay would know this - it would be common knowledge. However, for a more general audience, or if you went into great detail about how the structure of DNA was elucidated, then a reference would be appropriate.

Biomedical science :smile:

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