It's not as hard as you think.
The thing to remember with citation is that it is simply a practice of creating a record of who said what, where, at what time.
- Who - author
- What - the idea or quote you are citing
- Where - the website, journal article, newspaper, video, book, etc.
- At What Time - date of publication
Why bother?
Citations highlight and acknowledge resources you read to arrive at your final product. We don't write in a vacuum; your readers want to read the resources you read, or respond. This is a facet of scholarly communication, and it is actually pretty interesting. Your writing has value, as do the resources you are citing. Your work increases in value by placing it in the context of other writing and research.
Citation Managers
Citation managers can be very helpful when dealing with both collecting citations and generating bibliographies. They aren't perfect, but they make those more complicated papers with lots of sources much more manageable -- if you know how to use them well.
Citation Style
Depending on what discipline you are writing in (English? History? Biology?), you may use a different style of citation. The main styles are listed below, with links that take you to different pages within this guide. If you are citing a source published by the government, you will cite it using special consideration.
- MLA style (Modern Language Association) - Humanities
- APA style (American Psychological Association) - Education, Psychology, and Business
- Chicago/Turabian (Professor Turabian, University of Chicago) - Sociology, History and some of the Fine Arts
Many thanks to the librarians who created the citation research guide at Butler University for some of the ideas, resources, and language used in this guide.
