The Uncited Paragraph
A student writes a research paper on urban trees. One paragraph reads: 'Cities with more tree canopy report lower summer temperatures, and residents in greener neighborhoods describe better mental health. Tree planting also reduces stormwater runoff because roots absorb rain. Many cities now fund planting programs.' The student found these facts across three websites but cannot remember which fact came from which site. A classmate says, 'Just put a citation at the end of the paragraph; that covers everything.' The paper is due in two days, and the student has the three sites bookmarked but has not reopened them.
1. Evaluate the classmate's advice and explain what the paragraph needs in terms of source attribution.
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The advice is a shortcut that creates a new problem. A single citation at the end of a paragraph implies that everything before it came from that one source. Here the paragraph blends at least three claims-temperature, mental health, stormwater-that the student says came from different sites. One citation would misattribute two of them.
Attribution should track claims to sources. If a sentence reports a finding ('cities with more canopy report lower temperatures'), the reader must be able to tell whose finding it is. Options:
- Reopen the bookmarks and match each claim to its source, then cite per sentence or per claim.
- If a claim is genuinely common knowledge in the field (e.g., roots absorb rain-a general mechanism), it may need no citation, but the student should be able to defend that judgment, not assume it.
- If a source cannot be relocated in time, cut or soften the claim rather than cite it loosely.
The last sentence ('Many cities now fund planting programs') is also a factual claim that needs support or hedging.
2. The student has two days and three bookmarks. Outline a realistic plan for fixing the paragraph and avoiding the same problem elsewhere in the paper.
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Day 1-rebuild the evidence trail:
- Open each bookmark and, for each, list the specific claims it supports in a simple three-column table (source / claim / exact quote or figure).
- Go paragraph by paragraph and tag each factual sentence with a source from the table.
- Where a sentence matches no source, decide: find support, soften it ('some research suggests'), or cut it.
Day 2-verify and format: 4. Re-check that each citation points to the source that actually made the claim, not merely a related one. 5. Apply one citation style consistently and confirm every in-text citation has a matching entry in the reference list.
Prevention for the rest of the paper: take notes with the source attached at the moment of reading-copy the URL and a short quote beside every fact. The current problem began when facts were collected without their sources. Fixing the note-taking habit is faster than reconstructing it later, and it is the skill the assignment is really testing.