Library Research: Citation & Style Guides

What is a citation and citation style?

A citation is a way of giving credit to individuals for their creative and intellectual works that you utilized to support your research. It can also be used to locate particular sources and combat plagiarism. Typically, a citation can include the author's name, date, location of the publishing company, journal title, or DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

A citation style dictates the information necessary for a citation and how the information is ordered, as well as punctuation and other formatting.

How to do I choose a citation style?

There are many different ways of citing resources from your research. The citation style sometimes depends on the academic discipline involved. For example:

• APA (American Psychological Association) is used by Education, Psychology, and Sciences
• MLA (Modern Language Association) style is used by the Humanities
• Chicago/Turabian style is generally used by Business, History, and the Fine Arts

*You will need to consult with your professor to determine what is required in your specific course.

Any computer-generated citation should be considered a "rough draft." It's up to you to verify the correct formatting.

• Zotero

  Free plug-in that allows you to store and organize citations as you find them on your personal computer. Also allows you to create bibliographies in 20+ styles.

• Mendeley

  Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research

• BibMe

  Free citation builder for MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian. Can save or download bibliographies into Word.

Belmont Abbey College’s Writing Center exists to help students become better writers. We offer peer tutoring to students from all majors and will help with any writing-focused project for any class. Our one-on-one sessions have both student and tutor work through strategies to improve student writing. Students are welcome to come to the Writing Center during any stage in the process including brainstorming ideas to writing a rough draft to perfecting a final version. The Writing Center does not edit or proofread writing projects. Instead, our focus is on teaching students how to organize their projects, how to write a thesis statement and make an argument, and how to use sources. The Center is focused on helping students to improve their overall writing skills.

 VIEW THE CURRENT SCHEDULE

Faculty Director: Dr. Erin Jensen              Location: 216 Stowe Hall

• OWL at Purdue

  Sections on each part of the writing process, such as thesis statement, outline, etc. Includes recommendations on APA, MLA, and Chicago style.

• Excelsior Writing Lab

Check out these style guides at the front desk.