Organizing Notes and Citing Sources

When you research a topic, you collect many facts from many places. Organizing notes and citing sources means putting your facts into groups and writing down where each fact came from. This helps you build a clear, well organized project that gives proper credit to every source.

A category is a group of facts that belong together. If you are researching an animal, you might make categories like Habitat, Food, and Life Cycle. Every time you learn a new fact, decide which category it belongs in and write it under that heading.

Sorting your notes this way makes your project much easier to write later. Instead of a messy pile of facts, you have neat groups that already match the sections of your report.

Every fact you write down needs a source label. A source is the book, website, or article where you found that fact. Next to each note, write the title of the source and the author's name if you know it.

You should also write down the date. For a book, write the publication year. For a website, write the date you visited it. This information helps you give credit to the person who created it and lets you find the fact again if you need to check it.

Giving credit means telling your readers exactly where your facts came from. This is important because the facts belong to the author who wrote them, not to you. When you add a short source note under each fact, you are citing your source.

The picture below shows three categories about an animal. Each category has a fact and a source label right underneath it. Notice how every box stays organized and every fact has credit attached.

Before you start writing your final report, check your note categories. Ask yourself: does every category have enough facts? Does every fact have a source label under it? If a fact is missing its source, go back and find where you read it.

A well organized set of notes makes writing your report much faster. You already know which facts go together, and you already have the credit information ready to use.

Category: A group of facts that belong together, like Habitat or Food.

Source: A book, website, or other place where you found a fact.

Citing: Writing down the source of a fact to give proper credit.

Credit: Telling readers who the information really belongs to.

Heading: A short title that names a category of notes.

Publication Date: The year a book came out or the date you visited a website.

Pick a topic, like a country or an animal, and make three category headings. Read two sources and sort each fact you learn under the right heading. Write the source name under every fact.

When you finish, trade your notes with a classmate. Check that each category makes sense and that every fact has a source label attached.

Related lessons

• Note Taking and Source Documentation