: Re: If I mention a fictional character in a paper will I need any citations or references? I'm new here. Anyways my situation is that for my English class I'm writing a paper depicting the similarities

@Smith147

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Citations are not about copyright:

You have to cite to provide evidence for a claim, allowing the reader to find information, or avoiding to mislead others into thinking that something was your creation (plagiarism).
If quoting something is a breach of copyright, citing the source does not alleviate this (even though half the Internet seems to believe this).

You have to decide for yourself if any of the reasons for citation apply. For example, will your readers want a thorough evidence that Sherlock Holmes has his mental capabilities to begin with? Will a reference to A Study in Scarlet be of use to them, so they can look it up themselves? Could anybody be tricked into thinking that you created Sherlock Holmes? In your case, the answer to all these questions – particularly the last one – is probably no.

Still, be aware that your instructor may have a differing opinion about this and after all, one purpose of your exercise is probably to practice citing.
Copyright is about ensuring that creators can economically benefit from their work.

In all reasonable legislatures, quoting and summarising literary works for purposes of analysis, criticism, etc. is not subject to copyright or explicitly exempted from it (with the possible exception if you do this excessively).
In American copyright law, the keyword is fair use; in other laws it’s called something along the lines of the right of citation.

You have to worry even less about copyright if the works in question are in the public domain. However, if this is actually relevant for your literary analysis, you are likely to do something else wrong anyway.

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