There are a number of styles you can use to cite your work, ask your instructor which they prefer, or what is best for your field.
All of these manuals are print and can be found at the Reference Desk, click the link for their record in the catalog. We've also provided some additional links to resources created by your friendly librarians, these resources are listed underneath the citation.
APA (American Psychological Association)
The American Psychological Association (APA) style is a general and widely used style in the social sciences, education, and other fields.
Basics of APA Style (tutorial)
Citing Bibliographic Sources: APA (LibGuide)
Citation that is widely used (or adapted) by fields in the humanities and social sciences.
Citing Bibliographic Sources: Chicago (LibGuide)
Chicago Style (University of Chicago Press)
MLA (Modern Language Association)
MLA Style, developed by the Modern Language Association, is a very popular citation style used throughout the humanities.
Citing Bibliographic Sources: MLA (LibGuide)
MLA (Modern Language Association)
A Manual for Writers (Turabian)
Turabian's Style is a basic, widely used style for history and many other disciplines.
Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual
Documenting Sources: APA Style
Documenting Sources: Chicago Style
Plagiarism is the act of stealing, using or passing off as someone elses
words, phrases, ideas, writings, or creative work. It can mean turning in
someone else's work as your own, whether you mean to or not. Most professionals would never do this intentionally, but it can happen (and does) unknowingly.
The best way to avoid it is to learn to cite your work effectively!
According to Diana Hacker, editor of The Bedford Handbook, reminds her readers that "three different acts are considered plagiarism: (1) failing to cite quotations and borrowed ideas, (2) failing to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks, and (3) failing to put summaries and paraphrases in your own words" (570).
Citations contain information that let people find content, including the author, title, publisher, and date of the information, among other things.Basically you have to give authors credit for the work they did.
1. It gives the creator of work credit where credit is due.
2. It lets your readers know where you got your information, so they can tell if your sources are reliable.
3. It gives readers information about the resource so they can find it if they want more information.
If you use someone elses copyrighted work, you have to cite it. This includes any print and digital information you use in your paper or other work.
You can avoid plagiarism by always citing your sources, including any and all resources and information found on the Web, via the Internet, or other electronic sources. Citing your sources accomplishes a number of things.
Because they appear at the end, citations might be the last thing a person thinks about when writing a paper. Most everyone has written a Bibliogrphy in one of its many fancy forms. But in reality the citations that form it are smattered across the paper, and glue the writer's idea together with facts, thought, and commentary from first and secondhand knowledge of outside experts, experiments, and experiences.
Tips on building a citation: