Citations and links

Every card gives you two ways to take a passage with you: copy it with a ready-made citation, or open it where it was published. Both live in the card's icon row, described in Reading a result card.

Copying a passage with its citation

The copy icon, "Copy chunk and citation", puts three things on your clipboard: the passage in double quotes, a blank line, and a citation in APA style as plain text. The icon turns into a check for two seconds to show it worked. For a General Conference passage the result looks like this, with the first line standing in for the passage:

"The passage, word for word."

Elder Patrick Kearon. (2024). God's Intent Is to Bring You Home. General Conference. Retrieved from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2024/04/45kearon

The pieces, in order:

• Who. The speaker, or the author when there is no speaker. Names appear as the source records them, so a speaker may carry "Elder" or "President".
• Year. The conference year, otherwise the publication year. When the document has no date the citation says "n.d."
• Title. The document's title as published.
• Venue. "General Conference", "BYU Studies", "Liahona" and so on.
• Retrieved from and the web address. This part is left out when the document has no address.

A piece the document lacks is left out rather than printed blank, and a piece that already ends in a period, question mark or exclamation mark is not given a second period.

Scripture citations follow a different shape: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (n.d.)." followed by the verse, then "In" and the volume it belongs to, as in "Alma 32:21. In Book of Mormon." Apocrypha citations credit the "King James Version. (1769)." and place the verse in "The Apocrypha".

Opening the original

The external-link icon, "View original source", opens the document at its publisher in a new tab. A scripture link opens the chapter on churchofjesuschrist.org scrolled to the verse. An Apocrypha link lands on the verse as well. In the rare case that no address can be built for a passage, the icon is still drawn but leads nowhere.

The source card's copy button

The source card has its own copy button, "Copy quote and attribution", with a shorter format: the whole passage in quotes, a blank line, then the title and byline on one line and the address on the next. Its "Open the original source" link works like the card link above.

To keep a passage rather than copy it, save it to a notebook.