Why is citing and referencing so important?
Citing sources in the text is an important way by which you demonstrate the quality of your arguments and evidence in scholarly activities. However, it is more important than this because it also allows you to demonstrate that you are not stealing other people’s intellectual property, that is, their ideas, and pretending they are your own. This is a very important aspect of scholarly academic work. To steal other people’s ideas and pretend they are your own is called plagiarism and it is a very serious academic offence that attracts very severe penalties.
