Citation Guidelines

Why cite?   

• Gives credit to authors whose works you have used (whether you quote them or not) 
• Provides a trail by which others can locate the materials you consulted 
• Provides evidence of your research 
• Protects you from accusations of plagiarism 
• No one can say you stole or copied ideas from someone else  

Tips to help you avoid plagiarizing: 

• Never cut and paste 
• Always cite sources
  • All words quoted directly from another source 
  • All ideas paraphrased from a source
  • All ideas borrowed from another source: statistics, graphs
  • All ideas or materials taken from the Internet, including images

• Use these tutorials to help you take proper notes from your sources:
  • Summarizing and paraphrasing guidelines
  • Note taking tutorial

The citation styles most commonly used:

• American Psychological Association Style (APA) - the most common style in the sciences and social sciences (economics, psychology, education, sociology, etc.)
• Chicago (or Turabian) Style - commonly used in the humanities (history, philosophy, etc.) 
• Modern Language Association Style (MLA) - used in English and in some other disciplines in the humanities