At some point in your blogging career, you may want to quote or link to something you found online. It is very important that when you use something that you did not write, you provide proper credit. This applies to anything created by another person: writing, pictures, videos, music, anything.

Usually, the way you give credit in a blog post is less formal than the way you give credit in an academic paper. Don’t worry, I’m not going to teach you how to write a bibliographic citation. I will show some of the most common ways for bloggers to credit another’s work.

But, first, why is this a big deal? Isn’t information you can access for free available for you to use any way you want? The short answer is, no. The long answer is below.