How to Cite And Add References In A PowerPoint Presentation

Referencing is a technique for strengthening the credibility of your findings and arguments in your presentation. In addition, they help in demonstrating to the audience where you got them from. No matter if you are presenting your work in a formal or a professional setting, you must try adding references to it.

Finding references and cites isn’t a big deal. You may find references for your presentation in a variety of locations. However, if you have wrongly cited or added references to your presentation, that might badly influence the outcome of your presentation.

Thus, if you are among those who doubt their citing ability, you must check on it to avoid any further problems. Continue reading this article as we have attempted to give you a clearer view of this topic. You’ll know why and how to add references in your PPT Presentations.

Why Adding References To Your Presentation is Important? 

There are many reasons to justify the importance of references, some of which are as follows:

1. Justifies your Research:

When you include references in a presentation, it indicates that you understand what you are talking about. In addition, it proves that you are not beating the bush; you have done your homework on the subject. 

Consider yourself among the audience, and then think about it. Will you believe in anyone who is just presenting his findings without any resources? I bet you’ll also wonder if the information provided is reliable or not.

Remember, no matter how powerful words you have used in your presentation. If you can’t convince your audience, all the hard work will go to waste. Thus, adding references in your presentation is necessary. Furthermore, doing so may avoid instilling doubt in your audience’s minds regarding the accuracy of your data. 

2. Helps you stand out: 

Adding references allows the viewers to tell the difference between your own unique thoughts and others. This difference is critical since not all of the material you provide in your PowerPoint presentation will truly reflect your own perspective on the subject.

In some cases, you may disagree with the views given by a source, yet you may be required to provide other viewpoints on an issue or to clarify any stance made. Furthermore, this may assist you to stand out in terms of innovation and individuality from other presentations. The moment the audience realizes that a particular stance that fascinates them is coming from the presenter himself, their confidence in you increases. As a result, you are likely to advance on the career ladder.

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3. Assists You in Filtering Out Illegitimate Sources:

Search for a topic on the internet, and you’ll get millions of information sources in front of you related to that. With a storehouse full of resources, how would you know which one to consider and what to leave out? 

People usually don’t stress authenticity. Instead, they just consider the material that is easy to comprehend and obtain. However, this doesn’t indicate that the information is based on a reliable source of study.

Hence, once you realize the duty of presenting the information along with the source, you become more cautious when deciding what data to include and what to leave out of your presentation. 

4. Acknowledges the source of information:

Nobody selects a source that isn’t useful, whether to their presentation or if citing in research. As a result, citing a source shows that you are presumably well-versed in the particular field. Besides, mentioning the source of your knowledge demonstrates that you have spent some time researching the subject. As a result, it is a means of recognizing the person’s efforts and hard work. 

5. Citing helps you prevent Plagiarism: 

Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s work or thoughts as their own. Even if it’s not done on purpose, no one appreciates plagiarized work. No matter what the work is related to, everyone prefers originality. Thus, before publishing or presenting your work, use an online plagiarism tool to ensure that your work is free from plagiarism.

There is no harm in incorporating somebody’s work in your work if you find anything relevant. However, citing or referring to the source must be done. This way, you’ll prevent plagiarism and will also help you get away from landing in serious legal repercussions. 

Knowing that plagiarizing someone else’s work is a legal offense can cause you trouble in the long run if they take any action against you. As a result, it’s best to play it safe and include references in your presentation where you find it necessary. 

Ways to incorporate cite sources or references in your presentation:

Now that you have known the importance of citation in your presentation let’s see how can you do this:

Know that there are various citation formats to choose from, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and others. They can either be used solely or can be used in a combination of two or more methods. This depends totally on your requirements.

Below are the steps that will assist you on how to cite or add a reference in your PowerPoint presentations:

1. Citation of Images:

Figures, pictures, and clip arts incorporated in your presentation must be cited. To cite them, you can add references to an image’s footnote.

2. In-text Citation:

Adding references manually to the text incorporated in the presentation slides is known as In-text Citation. One must make sure that he/she always adds references or cites the source from where the direct quotations, facts and paraphrased material is incorporated in the presentation slide.

In case if you are opting to add a reference in APA style, then after the phrase, you must add the text citation. The standard APA format goes like this: write the name of the author, publishing date, the title of the presentation [PowerPoint slides], and link to the source (URL). 

3. Make a Reference List at the end:

Besides the ways discussed above, you may also create an individual slide for adding the references to the cited sources. By the end of your presentation, incorporate a slide which only incorporates a list of citation sources. We would recommend you keep the font size a little bigger. It would be good if you stick to 12 lines only per slide.

However, if you are an academic user, Google Scholar has a variety of formats for citation. All you need to do is simply type your reference’s title into the searching tab of scholar.google.com and wait for the result. Doing so will appear all the title-related sources links in front of you. Under your source, click on the quotation (“) button. There you’ll get a list of formats for your citation, such as MLA, Chicago, APA, etc. Just select the format you want and proceed. Copy the link of the citation source and paste it into your Reference List in your PowerPoint presentation.

4. Utilize an Online Citation Generator:

However, if you want to avoid the hassle and the frustrating citation process, then Online Citation Generators are available for you. It is one of the most straightforward methods for citing sources in presentations or other documents.

By utilizing these, you can save a lot of your time as you cannot write the citation from scratch or manually. Instead, just copy-paste the URL link of the references and leave the rest to the cite generator. Once it’s done, copy and paste links into your PowerPoint presentation slides. 

The Citation Builder tool by NC State University Libraries enables you to establish citations for your sources and references in different styles such as MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. See the screenshot above; you can select the source type. If you want to generate a citation for a website, then go for it. Or if for a book, then select that. Likewise, it allows you to generate for Journal, Newspaper, Movie, conferences and a wide range of sources.