International Students -- Information Literacy Introduction: To Cite or Not Cite?

Citation: A (Very) Brief Instruction link to video with closed captions and transcript.

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/endnotes 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:

1. Ask your professor or TA which style they prefer or require for your course
2. 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

3. Consult with a Writing Associate working in the Writing Center located in the Academic Commons, Mudd Center.

Once you have picked your citation style, make sure to be consistent with it throughout your paper. You may want to consider using a citation management tool such as RefWorks to help you collect, organize, and cite the sources you use for your research.