What does acknowledging sources involve?

Sources of information and the ideas of others that you use in your assignments, research and class activities may include books, journal articles, newspaper or magazine articles, company documents and web-sites, government or institutional reports, patents, and personal communication, among others. 

Information and ideas from these sources are found in a variety of forms, including words, numbers and statistics, diagrams, tables, logos, music, video, plans, computer source code, and so on.

In academic work, we acknowledge sources in written work by referencing the source in two areas: 

1.  in the body of the text, through in-text citations, footnotes (placed at the bottom of a page), or endnotes (placed at the end of a chapter or report, but before the reference list); and 

2.  a reference list placed at the end of an assignment or thesis, but before appendices.  

In this course, the preferred method is in-text citations, along with a reference list.  Footnotes may be used sparingly for additional information (e.g. statistics of or limited side comments), but normally not for referencing the sources of information.