Citing has always been seen as quite a difficult part of the essay writing. For many people, it is easier to write an actual essay than to put citations in it correctly. However, it can’t be denied that without citations, it is impossible to imagine a valid academic work. At the same time, while citing journals or books is more common and easier to understand, there is a significant information source, that is not frequently discussed in terms of citations – YouTube videos and online courses. So, what to do when you need to cite such sources? Of course, you can always use some help from online essay writing services like EssayBulls, where you are prevented from paying for essays beforehand. But with a little research and some helpful tips, you can easily figure out the proper citation for videos and online courses by yourself!
Search the information about the video or the course
The name of the video is the most obvious information to consider when you cite it. What is more, videos, like any creation, has its author. It may be a single person or an organization. What is more, on YouTube, videos are located on channels. The name and the link to the channel is also useful information for your citations, as well as the link to the video itself. Even the duration of the video, date of posting, and date when you have found it can be included in the citation. In the case of online courses, name, link, and date also apply.
Get familiar with the citation styles
Generally, there are three main styles of citation and overall formatting of essays that are used in the majority of academic institutions. These styles are called APA, MLA, and Chicago or Turabian. Depending on the style that is required from you, your citation would have slightly different formatting and contain slightly different information.
APA Style
If you are using APA style formatting, you would have to use the following format:
Author, A. A. [Screen name]. (year, month day). Title of video [Video file]. Retrieved from http://xxxxxxxxx
If you don’t know the name of a video creator, you could use the name of the channel as well. The username of the channel’s owner can also be used if you don’t know his or her real name. You can also notice that after a video title, you have to specify that it is a video file. You don’t need such a specification for an online course.
MLA Style
In MLA, your citation would look like this:
Last name, First name. or Username. “Title of Video.” Title of Site. Name of institution or publisher, Day Month Year of publication.Day Month Year of access.
As you can see the main difference here are the brackets and the way the name of the creator is written. The MLA style requires you to write the full first and second names. What is more, you don’t need to specify the type of file that you are citing in MLA. This means that for both videos and online courses, the citation would look similar.
Chicago (Turabian) Style
This style is quite different from the other two. The citation format is the following: Title of Video (date uploaded) YouTube video, added by Username of uploader [Online]. Available at URL [Accessed date] As you can see, this style is somewhat more convenient to use for video citations, and it contains less information. However, in the case of an online course, the citation would look slightly different. It would be cited as if you were citing a website:
Last name, First name. “Title of Article or Page.” Title of Website. Month Day, Year of Publication, or last modification. url or doi. Here, the citation style is similar to the MLA. The name and second name of the author is written completely. The brackets are also the same as in the MLA.
I hope that those tips would help you to understand the citation a little better. While it may seem hard at first glance, with a bit of practice, you can become the real expert in this field! So, don’t fear the citation requirements. With the tips above, they would no longer be an obstacle for you!
