Some of you have asked about citations for your essays. There are several different citation standards, and so long as you are consistent it does not matter much to me which you use. Since this is a short essay, a full-scale bibliography would be overkill. Here are some principles for figuring out when and how to cite:
Whenever you got an idea, or particular way of expressing it, from someone else, that person deserves acknowledgment out of respect and intellectual honesty. Also, unattributed use of copyrighted material is illegal.
Keep it clean -- a simple footnote that gets the reader as directly as possible to the source, without interrupting your prose, is best.
A citation to a printed source is preferable to an electronic one, even though you may have located it electronically (internet addresses have a way of disappearing). If your source only exists on the web, look for signs that it is reliable (named author, dated posting, respected host site such as a major university, internal references to published data...).
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