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HIST 2535 - Latin America and the United States - Robinson: Citing Your Sources

Style Guides for Writing

Style Guides provide formatting guidelines for research papers, including citations and bibliographies.  The style guides highlighted below are among the most common style guides in use in academia today. 

Consult your professor before selecting a style guide for your assignments.

Citing Sources?

When you "cite" a source you are showing, within the body of your text, that you took the words or ideas from another place. 

You also are providing a way for the reader (your professor) to locate the sources you relied on in your research.

Failure to acknowledge these sources can be considered plagiarism.

Remember that for whatever style you chose (in consultation with your professor), pay attention to the details and be consistent.  Incorrect citations are just as bad as no citations at all!

See the difference...

The examples below demonstrate how the various elements of a book citation (author, title, publisher, and year) are arranged using three different style guides.

 APA

Danesi, M. (2009).  X-rated!:  The power of mythic symbolism in popular culture.

    New York:  Palgrave Macmillan.

MLA

Danesi, Marcel.  X-rated!:  The Power of Mythic Symbolism in Popular Culture.  New

     York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Chicago

Danesi, Marcel.  2009.  X-Rated!:  The power of mythic symbolism in popular culture.

     New York:  Palgrave Macmillan.

I forgot my style guide...

Do you need to format a citation for your bibliography and can't find your style guide?

Check out the Library's Style Guides for Writing page for some online examples of properly formatted citations for a variety of citation styles.

Tutorials Anyone?

For more citation fun check out one of these great tutorials.