Citation Guidelines
July 3, 2025
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:
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