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As a university student, a large amount of your time is spent on research: you read academic books and journals; you write research papers, attend lectures and participate in classroom discussions. By doing all of this, you are not only consuming information, but are actively participating in the production and sharing of knowledge. This cycle of consuming, producing, and sharing knowledge in academia is called the scholarly conversation.
Consider, that your research projects are a conversation with the sources and their authors--- and by including and citing those sources, you are showing that you respect other thinkers and that you’re adding something new to the conversation.
To learn more, watch "The Scholarly Conversation" by McMaster University Libraries below.
As we've mentioned, when you cite a source, you show how your voice enters into an intellectual conversation. However, as we creating our scholarship, it can be hard sometimes to identify when and how you should cite your sources.
Facts that are generally accessible (the date of the Declaration of Independence) need not be cited to a particular source, but once you go up one level of detail on the information ladder, you probably need to cite the source (the number of people who signed the Declaration).
Paraphrasing is your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form. It is a way you can include sources in your research without directly quoting source material. Anytime you do paraphrase information from a source, you need to specify where you got that information.
For more information, watch "What is Citing" below.
MLA (Modern Language Association) is the style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources in arts and humanities disciplines.
MLA Handbook by 
In order to avoid plagiarism, all information which you gather from someone else’s research or knowledge needs to be both cited in a Works Cited page as well as through in-text citations (also called parenthetical citation). In-text citations are inserted directly into an essay using parentheses. In-text citations must be used to give credit to the original author for paraphrases, summaries, as well as direct quotes. Generally, they are placed at the end of a sentence.
In-text citations:
The format for creating an in-text citation in MLA Style is to include the last name of the author of the work, followed by the page number of the content used.
Direct Quote:
"In the Caribbean the successful planting of new varieties of crops owed much to the Amerindian, who carefully nurtured each newly introduced food source." (Mackie 42)
Lead-in Reference with quote:
Christine Mackie notes that "in the Caribbean the successful planting of new varieties of crops owed much to the Amerindian, who carefully nurtured each newly introduced food source." (42)
Paraphrase:
The success of new varieties of crops planted in the Caribbean was due in part to the careful tending by the Amerindians. (Mackie 42)
MLA style requires a Works Cited page at the end of your research paper. All entries in the Works Cited page must correspond to the works cited in your main text, in other words -- your in-text citations.
In the Works Cited:
The Works Cited for the source above will look like:
Mackie, Christine. Life and Food in the Caribbean. New Amsterdam Books, 1992.