Indicate if the example below needs source documentation. 1. Lester Thurow suggests the establishment of an education bank as an investment in human capital.

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.

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.