If you've ever struggled with formatting citations or knowing when or how to cite sources, you're not alone. Every person who's ever done a research project has had at least one citation-related headache, including your professors! There are multiple citation styles, all with their own rules. You might have semesters where you're using multiple styles for different courses. It's a lot to track.
Fortunately, there are people on campus who are trained and ready to help you with your citation questions. We can help you create citations, format endnotes and works cited pages, and also advise you on when and where you need citations. Writing Center Assistants and Reference Librarians are ready and available to help. There are many ways to get in contact with us. And you should also feel free to ask your professors, too!
You can also use some of the online tools available; you'll find guides to various online writing resources throughout this guide. Most databases and the library's catalog will cite sources for you. Just look for those options. And you can also use tools like EasyBib. But please remember that machines, like humans, are never perfect. It's not uncommon for these tools to cite sources incorrectly. Even if you use these tools, you still need to go back and proof every citation to make sure it's correct.
There are at least three reasons why writers cite their sources:
When you are preparing a document,use this checklist to be sure your citations are complete.
Because scholars in different disciplines emphasize different things when they read citations, there are many different styles. The MLA style, used for literary studies, makes sure page numbers are provided in an in-text citaiton because the exactness of a quotation matters; the APA style used in psychology and other social sciences include the year of publication, because when research was conducted is considered particularly significant. The Chicago Style is used by disciplines such as history and religion, which value sources so much it's common to put all the information about a source in a footnote as well as in a bibliography at the end of a paper.
Whatever style you use, citations typically include author, title of the work, and publication informaiton (for books, publisher and year published; for articles, the journal, volume, date, and page numbers; for websites, a URL is needed).
The Gustavus Writing Center is a fantastic resource that can support you at all stages of writing. There are multiple ways to connect with Writing Assistants, including virtual and in person.