You get your research assignment from your professor and they require that you cite your sources. Maybe they want you to use APA or MLA, or some other style like Chicago, AMA, or ASA. What does this really mean?
Citing your sources...
Adds to your credibility and supports your ideas!
Helps your reader find the sources you reference to read for themselves
Ensures the accuracy of scientific and scholarly knowledge
Protects and acknowledges intellectual property rights
When should you cite?
Direct Quotations: When you use the author’s exact words
Paraphrasing: When you summarize someone else’s words or ideas
Facts: When you mention something that is not common knowledge
Images: When you use pictures, charts, and graphics that someone else created in a presentation
The different styles
While in college you are most likely to encounter either APA, Chicago or MLA styles.
Each style utilizes different information and formatting so be sure to reference the appropriate style guide while working on your projects.
Style guides provide the rules and standards for works in their respective fields, from grammar and language use, to the way authors are referenced and size of headings in a work. Style guides help writers from similar fields make their work look and read just like every other work from their discipline. In short, they help people read and reference works more easily.
View the style guides and the quick reference chart below as well as the tabs on the left hand side of the page for more information.
Elements of this guide were borrowed and edited from a guide originally created by Tessa Withorn at CSUDH Library and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
