Question

Indicate if the example below needs source documentation.

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Lester Thurow suggests the establishment of an education bank as an investment in human capital.  Documentation needed.

2. After reading, you arrive at the idea that coffee grounds rubbed on a wart will make it go away. You decide to use that idea in your research paper. No documentation needed.

Explanation:

A source document is a record that bears the original statement made by a person or the original financial transaction between two or more people. In literary writing, source documentation is used to indicate the origin of a statement usually made by an authority in a field. It instills trust in the reader, thus making him/her to believe that the literary work contains information that can be verified.

In the examples above, the first sentence that mentions an authority requires a source document so that the reader can verify or even read further about that particular statement.  The second statement does not needed a source document because it represents the idea of the writer.