"if [you] can't get the little things right, [you] can't be trusted on the big ones."

"Citations protect you from a charge of plagiarism, but beyond that narrow self-interest, correct citations contribute to your ethos.  First, readers don't trust sources they can't find.  If they can't find your sources because you failed to document them adequately, they won't trust your evidence; and if they don't trust your evidence, they won't trust . . . you.  Second, . . . if a writer can't get the little things right, he can't be trusted on the big ones."

     Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. Fitzgerald, The craft of research, 4th ed. (Chicago & London:  The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 203.