Welcome! The purpose of this guide is to help you properly cite your sources for a research paper. It is meant to assist you to understand the most common citation styles.
Use the tab menu located at the top of this guide to quickly access more information and examples on specific citation styles.
Citations are a way to give credit to individuals for their creative and intellectual works that you utilized to support your research. Citing the sources used in your research is, in the simplest of terms, giving credit where credit is due. Citations are also a way to combat plagiarism (see the box above for more information on Academic integrity & Avoiding Plagiarism and why it matters).
Properly citing your sources goes beyond simply giving credit to the original author/creator of the resources used. Citations help strengthen your argument and back up the point you are trying to get across to the reader. They lend credibility to your argument. Your readers can easily trace the resources used and locate them if needed. Citing your sources is also important in letting your professor and your readers know that you have done your due diligence and have researched your topic.
Generally speaking, anytime you utilize information written or composed by others, you need to create a citation referencing their work.
If you are doing any of the following, you need a citation:
Note: Information that is considered common knowledge does not need a citation. For more information on what is considered common knowledge, check out this article.
The citation style you choose to use will depend on what your professor wants you to use for class. There are three common citation styles and they each belong to a specific academic discipline/area of study:
For more information on how to use a specific citation format, use the tab menu located at the top of this guide.
When you make references to a source, either by paraphrasing or direct quotes, you need to indicate where the information came from. In-text citations briefly let your reader know who the author is and allow the reader to easily locate the reference at the end of your research paper on the bibliography page or works cited page.
A bibliography page and a works cited page are sometimes used interchangeably. Although they are both essentially a list (in alphabetical order) of sources used, there is one major difference between both: A works cited page only lists sources that you referred to in the body of your paper, while a bibliography lists all sources used even if you didn’t refer to it or have an in-text citation for it.
What information is needed for a citation? As you are conducting your research and finding the resources you will use, it is helpful to make note of the following information for each source, as it will serve as the building blocks for your citation:
Note: depending on the citation style you are using, you may need additional information to complete your citation. Use the tab menu located at the top of this guide for guidance on the specific information needed for different citation formats.
Citation builders use the information you provide to automatically generate a citation. They are online tools that create bibliographies and works cited lists. They extract bibliographic information from your source and provide you with output based on your citation style. It is important to note that, while these citation generators can be a great place to start your works cited page, it is essentially your responsibility to double-check the results. Just because a citation builder website creates a citation for you, it does not mean it is necessarily accurate.
The tabs in this box, include citation builder websites that are FREE to use.
This is developed by Carnegie Mellon University which generates citations and bibliographies in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian formats. Free citation generators usually do not have features like auto-fill and the ability to switch citation styles.
it is a free reference manager and academic social network to collaborate with other researchers as well as generate citations.
Developed by Calvin College library, this is a free tool to create MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations for many sources.
It is a free service that generates automatic MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago Quotations (but not bibliographies). You can copy and paste citations directly into Microsoft Word.
A Paid subscription is required for APA and Turabian. MLA is free. Members can save bibliographies and export them to Word.
The Zotero Citation Builder is a free tool that does not require downloads or registration. This provides 9000+ style options, including APA, Chicago, and MLA.
The citation generator does not require a user account for MLA, APA, and Chicago. There is an option to enter bibliographic information manually or to have it automatically filled out for books, articles, and websites.