If you use a YouTube video as part of your academic work on, say,a Chromebook designed for students, you must properly cite it. This will save you time down the line and help you avoid issues connected with plagiarism.
Do you need to cite a YouTube video? Look no further. Here’s our step-by-step guide showing how to reference credible sources properly in your work.
Locate the needed information
The first thing you need to do when quoting a YouTube video is to find the necessary information. To do so using the YouTube Android app:
After gathering the information you need to cite your chosen video, you’ll select a citation style. Here’s how to do that.
Pick a citation style
There are several citation styles, and we don’t cover all of them here. However, a few pointers apply to all or most of them. This guide covers the citation styles commonly used in publishing and academia. For each style, we provide an example based on the YouTube link used above.
Citation styles are established by specific universities, publishers, and academic associations. They are commonly compiled into official handbooks that contain instructions and examples.
When it comes to videos, there are a few key pieces of information that need to be referenced regardless of the citing style used. These are:
The way this information is organized can vary based on different citing styles. This applies to both in-line citations and reference entries. Here are a few examples of citing styles and when it’s appropriate to use them.
American Psychological Association (APA) Style
The author-date APA citation style is usually adopted by individuals studying or working on social and behavioral subjects. The APA style features a mix of in-text citations and a reference page. Here is how you would use the APA format for the YouTube channel and video cited above:
Modern Language Association (MLA) Style
One of the most used citation styles, the MLA style, is used in the academic field for humanities disciplines, including language and cultural studies. The MLA format uses a combination of in-text citations and reference list entries. To correctly use MLA citations, follow this format:
American Medical Association (AMA) Style Guide
This style is used in the medical and healthcare industry. AMA relies on a documentary-note style, which translates to placing numbers in the text to cite a source. The associated reference list should then be in numerical order:
Associated Press (AP) Stylebook
Mainly used by journalists, the AP citing style is the go-to for the publishing industry. Because of this,the 56th version of the Stylebookincludes over 300 new or revised entries. This is the basic format of the AP citing style:
The AP style is a subgenre of the Harvard style, a generic term for various author-date citation styles. While AP is mainly used in journalism, other Harvard-based citation styles are used in different academic disciplines.
Council of Science Editor Documentation Style (CSE)
The CSE citation style is mainly used in scientific fields, particularly physics, biological sciences, chemistry, and astronomy. This is how you’re able to use this numeric citation-sequence system:
The Bluebook
This style is specific to the law industry in the United States and is used for citing legal sources, including cases and statutes. It is similar to AMA as it uses a system of superscript numbers and footnotes:
The Chicago Style
Possibly the most used style in the publishing industry worldwide, the Chicago Manual of Style offers two ways to reference sources. The notes-bibliography system is usually employed in literature, history, and the arts, while the author-date is used in the physical, natural, and social sciences. Since we are citing a video about Android customization, we are going to use the first style:
Applying finishing touches
After choosing a citation style (and citation format) and referencing your YouTube videos, review your work. Different citation styles use specific formatting requirements, including capitalization, punctuation, italics for certain elements, and the order in which the information displays. The citation styles mentioned in this article have extensive guides, so have the right one at hand while organizing your sources.
Did you finish citing your YouTube videos and looking for a new challenge? Look athow to delete or pause your YouTube watch and search histories.
