Writing/Citing Guides

Style Guides

Style guides are widely used by professional associations and other organizations to illustrate how to correctly format and record information in order to achieve a consistent document appearance. They generally cover document elements such as page formatting and numbering, rules of punctuation, and bibliography, notes and references (citations).

The styles guides covered here are frequently used in colleges and universities. Check with your course instructor to see which style you should be using for their course.

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Chicago Manual of Style
• American Sociological Association

Why cite the books, articles, websites and other works you use in your research?

Citing sources serves two purposes:

1. To give the original author credit for his or her thoughts or ideas thereby avoiding plagiarism.
2. To provide the reader with the information he or she needs to find an original source in order to get clarification of a point, to get more information, or to assess the credibility of the quoted source.

When should you cite a source?

• You should cite your source if you use a direct quote, paraphrase (which means you changed the words a little bit), use information that may not be well-known or seems unusual, or you use direct statistical information.

• You also must cite all books, articles, Web pages, e-mails, newsgroup or blog postings, and any other information source you use in preparing your paper or other research project.

• You must include a works cited page or reference list at the end of all research papers or projects.