Online Resources for Writing Clearly and Citing Your Sources

Last week, we featured online resources for getting started with university writing and research. This week, we’ll be introducing you to some library guides that focus on writing clearly and citing your sources. 

Introductions and conclusions

This guide teaches you what introductions and conclusions are, how they should be organized, what to include and not include and why they are so important to your overall paper. 

Grammar

This guide is all about grammar and features information on subject-verb agreement, making nouns and pronouns agree, placing modifiers correctly, improving your sentence structure, and using dependent clauses effectively. 

Improve your punctuation

This guide provides tips to improve your punctuation and teaches you how to use colons, apostrophes, commas, and semicolons. 

Style

This guide explains how to take your writing to the next level by enhancing your writing style, including steps on choosing an appropriate tone, avoiding the use of the passive voice, being simple and concise, and more. 

Quotes

Have you ever wondered how to use quotations in your essay? This guide teaches you what quotations are, when you should use them, when you should paraphrase instead, how you can use quotes effectively, and how to integrate them into your essay. 

Cite your sources

Citing your sources is critical as it lets your readers know what information you have borrowed from where. This guide teaches you why you need to cite your sources, how to do it, and points to a variety of different citing styles.

If you want to learn more or talk to someone about any of the topics mentioned in this article, book an appointment with us.

Next time, we’ll be sharing some helpful online resources specific to finding sources. 

Questions?

Email us at library@uoguelph.ca.