Citation Management and Generation

It's not as hard as you think.

Citations are simply a practice of creating a record of who said what, where, and 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.

Many students are unsure when and how to cite, and also have trouble with the concept of what requires citations. The video below covers a lot of these topics.

If you want to know more about this, check out our "Quoting and Paraphrasing" page for more help and videos.

Depending on your major or the classes you are taking, you may be asked to use a different "style guide" for your citations. All this means is that you may have to format your citations slightly differently and use either "in-text" or "footnote" or "end note" citations. But don't worry!

Regardless of which Style Guide you are asked to use, each citation style requires the same basic information. The only differences are generally the order of information, some of the punctuation used, and how it is actually cited within your paper.

So, what guide will you be using? It changes. Below are some of the most common Style Guides and their main disciplines.