Cite It Right! Join me for an immersive source citations for genealogy course
- Shannon Bennett
- Aug 14
- 3 min read
Every genealogist knows a particular kind of frustration.
You find the record. It's the one. The entry that finally places your ancestor in the right county in the right year. You capture it, you note the name and the date, and you move on to the next question, riding the high of a good research day.
Months later, you need to go back. Maybe a cousin is questioning your conclusion. Maybe you're assembling a report. Maybe you simply want to look again. And you cannot find it. Not the database, not the volume, not the page. You know what it said. You have no idea where it lives.
I've watched this happen to careful, capable researchers for years. It isn't a failure of attention. It's happened to me! It's what happens when nobody hands you a system.
That's what this course is.
On Wednesday, August 19, 2026, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern, I'm teaching Cite It Right: A Practical Guide to Genealogical Source Citations. A live, three-hour immersive session through Family Tree University.
What we'll do
We are not going to spend three hours on commas.
We're going to work from a single idea: a citation is not a formatting ritual. It's a set of answers to five questions:
who created this record?
what is it?
when was it made?
where is it held?
where within it did you find what you found?
Answer those five, and you have a citation, whether or not the punctuation is perfect. Answer them consistently, and you have a research trail that anyone can follow, including the version of you who comes back to this problem in 2031.
Along the way, we'll cover the vocabulary that changes how you evaluate a record by learning the difference between a source, the information inside it, and the evidence it provides; why it matters whether you're holding an original, a derivative, or an authored work. We'll write one source three different ways and talk about why all three versions are correct. We'll take apart the layered citations that digital records require, using Elizabeth Shown Mills's own Record / Access / Citing framing, and you'll see that they're far less mysterious than they look.
And we'll practice.
What you'll walk away with
Every registrant receives a full handout packet, including:
Templates for eleven common record types, each with a worked example
A capture checklist for citing while you research, so you never do this retroactively again
A self-check list of the most common citation mistakes
A one-page repeatable workflow showing the entire course, compressed to something you can pin above your desk
The course discussion forum stays open for a week after the live session. Bring your hardest source, the one no template seems to cover. Those questions are always the most useful ones, and everyone else in the room is quietly wondering the same thing.
Who this is for
This course is for people new to genealogy, and for those who have tried to learn citations before and walked away frustrated. If you've opened Evidence Explained, felt your stomach drop, and quietly closed it again, then you are exactly who I had in mind while writing this.
A note for anyone worried about editions: if you own the third edition revised, or the standalone QuickSheets and QuickCheck models, those remain in print and remain useful. Nothing you already own has been made obsolete. Use what works for you.
The methods here follow Elizabeth Shown Mills's Evidence Explained and the Chicago Manual of Style, the standards the genealogical community relies on, translated into something you can actually do on a weeknight.
Details
Cite It Right: A Practical Guide to Genealogical Source Citations Wednesday, August 19, 2026 · 3:00–6:00 p.m. Eastern Live online through Family Tree University Instructor.
Citations are not the boring part of genealogy. They're what turn a collection of interesting findings into research that stands up. Learn to build something you can trust.
