Citation form

When you write something, you use other people's ideas and words to make your own points. Sometimes, you might even use other people's pictures, graphs, or data to support your argument. In order to give credit to the people whose work you used, you need to tell your reader where you found it.

Citation is like telling your reader where you found the cool Lego pieces for your new Lego creation. If someone else gave you some of the pieces, you wouldn't just say that you made the whole thing yourself. You would tell people that your friend gave you some of the pieces. That's kind of like a citation -- it's like saying "I got this piece of information from this book or article that I read."

Citation form is just a way of making sure that your citation is written in a certain way so that other people can find the book or article that you used. It's like having a special way of organizing your Lego instructions so that anyone who wants to build your creation can follow the directions.