Citations all contain the same basic types of information. Styles like APA, MLA and Chicago dictate how the information is formatted and presented to the reader. Learn your department's style and work it!
Web sources come in many shapes and sizes. There are websites, online books, government publications, articles from the library's databases and more. Each electronic source is cited differently, so for these materials, it makes sense to consult the style guide used by your department. Here is a fairly straightforward example of how to cite a web page.
Essay or chapter citations will usually contain both the title of the essay and the title of the book where it appeared. They also include the author of the essay, the editor of the book, the place of publication, the publisher, the date of publication and the page numbers where the essay appeared.
These citations typically appear at the end of your paper in a separate section called a reference list or bibliography. The citations are usually arranged alphabetically by the authors' last names. Below you'll find the pieces that make up a typical reference list citation for a book, an article, an essay and a web source. These references all use the MLA citation style.
Citations for books usually contain the author's name, the title of the book, the place of publication, the name of the publisher and the date of publication.
Articles typically contain the author's name, the date of publication, the title of the article, the title of the periodical where the article appeared, the volume and issue numbers (if they exist), and the page ranges where the article appeared.
