Complete Guide to Citing Lecture Notes

When writing research papers, students often need to use information from their course or lecture notes. In this case, such information must be cited properly so that your readers can easily locate the material. To write a citation for lecture notes, you may need to contact the lecturer. All the citations provide similar types of information, but that they can have different formats. For example, it’s important to know the difference between such formats as APA, MLA, and Chicago. Learn more about these citation formats and rules of citing lecture notes with WritersHouse.com.

MLA

1. Begin your citation with the instructor’s last name and first name, separated by a comma. If you include a reference to a lecture, it must be related not to your personal notes, but to the lecture itself. Therefore, you should include your instructor as the author.

2. Include the title of the lecture in quotation marks. If there is a specific slideshow or handout used in the lecture, we recommend that you use the title from the document. If there’s no specific title, provide a brief description of the topic of the lecture. Capitalize nouns, adverbs, verbs, and pronouns. At the end of the title, put a period and close quotation marks:

• Smith, John. “The Lecture.”

3. Along with the basic information, provide the date of the course and the name of your university. When citing presentation slides, start with the name of the course, followed by a comma. Write the date in the day-month-year format, followed by a comma and the name of the college. When citing a handout, include the name of your college right after the name of the course. In this case, you should also add the word “received” before you specify the date when you received the handout:

• Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Political Science 240, 13 Apr. 2019, The University.
• Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Political Science 240, The University. Received 13 Apr. 2019.

4. Determine the type of the document. To write the last part of the citation, you should describe the medium that you’ve used. For instance, when citing the entire lecture, you can simply use the word “lecture.”

• Lectures: Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Political Science 240, 13 Apr. 2019, The University. Lecture.
• Slide Presentations: Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Political Science 240, 13 Apr. 2019, The University. Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
• Handouts: Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Political Science 240, The University. Received 13 Apr. 2019. Class handout.

5. When writing in-text citations in parentheses, use your instructor’s name. We suggest that you include such citations both when providing direct quotes and paraphrasing. When citing documents with slides or page numbers, make sure to include these numbers. Don’t include page numbers when citing your own notes.

• (Smith).
• (Smith, slide 3).

APA

1. First, provide the author’s last name, followed by a comma and the first initial. If there’s no information about the author of the material, include your lecturer’s name.

2. After the author’s name, include the year the notes were taken or published, in parentheses. If there’s no such information available, just write “n.d.”

• Smith, J. (2019).

3. Once you’ve specified the date, provide the full name of the course. Make sure that the title of the lecture includes the name of the course and the unit code. After this, include the week of the lecture or a specific title of the lecture. Write the name of the class in the title case.

• Smith, J. (2019). POLS 240: Real Heroes of the 1970s, week 5 notes.

4. When formatting your citations according to the APA style, you should also include the type of the medium. Most often, students use class handouts, slide presentations, and lecture notes:

• Smith, J. (2019). POLS 240: Real Heroes of the 1970s, week 5 notes [lecture notes].

5. If lecture notes can be accessed online, include the URL of the materials after “Retrieved from.” Don’t put a period after a URL.

• Smith, J. (2019). POLS 240: Real Heroes of the 1970s, week 5 notes [lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://college.lecture.html/2019/week5

6. When writing in-text citations, include the author’s last name in parentheses, followed by the year the notes were taken. When using direct quotes, include a page number or slide number if you can.

• (Smith, 2019).
• (Smith, 2019, slide 5).

Chicago

1. Begin your citations with the instructor’s name. Provide your instructor’s last name, followed by a comma, and the first name.

2. If the lecture has its specific title, you should include it. If there’s no particular title, provide a brief description of the topic of the lecture. Capitalize verbs, nouns, pronouns, and adverbs. Use quotation marks.

• Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.”

3. Determine when and where the lecture was given. Include the name of the course, the name of the college or university, its location, and the date in month-day-year format. All the elements must be separated with commas.

• Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s.” Class lecture, History of Fighting Crime, The University, The City, April 14, 2019.

4. You should also change this format when writing in-text footnotes. In this case, you should provide the title of the lecture with no additional punctuation. After this, include the necessary information in parentheses, as in the example below:

• Smith, John. “Real Heroes of the 1970s” (class lecture, History of Fighting Crime, The University, The City, April 14, 2019).