Plagiarism is almost always on purpose. But everyone always has that deep dark fear that they didn’t actually do the citation right and that someone might come after them for it. Students, fear not. Here are some worry-free ways to write a paper and have someone (well, more like something) else generate all the citations you need.
1. Website tools
Even just a simple search on Google reveals a lot of great citation options which allow students to easily create the copy-paste-able content to fill out the works cited page. Sites like KnightCite and EasyBib, which both work very well, can also vary a bit. For the purposes of most students, EasyBib probably takes the cake. It allows you to search for your book/enter the URL etc. and does the rest for you. It can even tell when the article was published, the author, and all the other parts of a citation that you need.
Also an advantage of EasyBib is their amazing iPhone/Android App which makes it really easy to generate a citation, all you need to do is take a picture of the barcode and ISBN numbers.
For those serious scholars who are citing journals, KnightCite is a much better option. It allows you to custom input all the information from the journal (or whatever source you’re using) and create a citation. The big disadvantage is that
2. Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word also has automated citations for your books and will even format the entire works cited page for you. All you have to do is simply add your citations in by going to the “References” tab and clicking “Insert Citation” and then you type in the information from your book.
Once you’ve accumulated a plethora of references, it’s easy to just go back through your paper and click add citations for the sources you’ve already added to your paper. Plus at the end you can just click on the insert bibliography and then you’ve got an alphabetized formatted bibliography for all the citations you used.
3. Google Docs + Google Scholar
For those of you thrifty people, like me, Google thankfully offers a super easy to use free alternative to the citations abilities Word has to offer. And it has a much better workflow too. Google Docs is integrated with Google Scholar, an online reference search that goes through accredited sources, e.g. academic journals, legal documents, research dissertations etc., and makes it much easier to find and cite those very accredited resources.
The general workflow is this: you first write out exactly what you are trying to say, write to support your thesis. Then, once you’ve added all the information in that you want to use, highlight different claims or pieces of evidence and right click. Choose research which will bring up the Google Scholar sidebar. Once you find the articles that support the information you are looking for (or even add to it!) just click cite and then Google will automatically add a footnote citation to the article for you.
The only downside is the lack of Bibliography generation which Microsoft Office supports, but you do get one of the most powerful search engines on your side which makes it easy to combine the research and writing process for a closer feedback and reflection loop. Ultimately though, no matter what tool you use, the ease of generating these citations will make writing your paper a breeze compared to before.
Quinn Winters is (going to be) a student at Case Western Reserve University, class of 2017, and currently works at a startup doing online tutoring for high school and college students.
