Research Guides: JOUR 447: Sports, Protest and the Media: Write & Cite

Writing Resources

Abstracts and Executive Summaries
Not sure how to write an abstract? Check out this step-by-step guide from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). Note that your abstracts will be a little different because you'll be laying out what you're going to study instead of summarizing research you've already done.
Annotated Bibliographies (Purdue OWL)
Everything you need to know in order to create annotated bibliographies in Chicago, APA and MLA - from Purdue OWL.
NVivo
NVivo is a qualitative data analysis tool, useful for performing content analysis and identifying themes and language patterns across multiple sources. UMD students, faculty, and staff can install the program through TerpWare for free.

Research and journalism are conversations! By citing, you position yourself as a scholar within those conversations.

Citing your sources...

Gives credit to the person or group who spent the time researching and writing in order to provide that information.
Allows your readers to find the source later if they wants to read it themselves.
Gives credibility to the argument of your paper by incorporating information from experts.
Indicates that you did a thorough job researching your topic.

The resources below can help you cite your sources and style your paper according to different standards and formats.

Citation Tools (UMD Libraries)
Zotero
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. It's especially useful if you're working with a lot of sources (20 or more).

This is the main style used in U.S. journalistic publications.

The Associated Press Stylebook, 2024-2026
ISBN: 9781541605114

You can use the print version of the current AP Stylebook at McKeldin Library.

APA Style Reference Examples
The APA Style website is a comprehensive source for style and grammar guidance. The Reference Examples page details how to cite just about any type of resource.