How to pick a citation Style
The citation style you decide to use throughout your paper will dictate the information you need to gather and how the information will be ordered, as well as punctuation and formatting you will use for your in-text citations/footnotes /endnote and reference list/bibliography/ works cited. Deciding what style you will use in your paper at the beginning of your research will help you know what information about your sources you need to collect.
Here are some steps to help you decide what style you want to use:
- Ask your professor or TA which style s/he prefers or requires for your course
- Pick among the standard styles based on discipline/area of study of the course
- APA (American Psychological Association) used in the Social Sciences
- Chicago, which supports two styles:
- Notes and Bibliography used in the Humanities
- Author-Date used in the Sciences and Social Sciences
- MLA (Modern Language Association) used in English, Rhetoric, foreign language, and the humanities
- Consult with a Writing Associate working in the Writing Center located in the Academic Commons, Mudd Center..
Once you have picked your citation style, be sure to consistent with it throughout your paper. You may want to consider using a citation management tool such has RefWorks to help you collect, organize and cite the sources you use for your research.
Writing Associates Program and the Writing Center
What NOT to Do
# 1. Clone
Submitting another's work, word-for-word, as one's own
#2 CTRL-C
Contains significant portions of text from a single source without alterations
#3 Find - Replace
Changing key words and phrases by retaining the essential content of the source
#4 Remix
Paraphrases from multiple sources, made to fit together
#5 Recycle
Borrows generously from the writer's previous work without citation
#6 Hybrid
Combines perfectly cited sources with copied passages without citation
#7 Mashup
Mixes copied material from multiple sources
#8 404 Error
Includes citations to nonexistent or inaccurate information about sources
#9 Aggregator
Includes proper citations to sources but the paper includes almost no original work
#10 Re-tweet
Includes proper citation, but relies too closely on the text's original wording and/or structure.
This document is compiled from the following freely accessible online sources: CWPA, Indiana University and Montgomery College, North Carolina State University Libraries, & plagiarism.org