Documentation and Citation Guides

When do I need to cite a source?
How do I get started?
Where do I find out how to format citations?
Will the Writing Center tutors help me with citation?

When do I need to cite a source?

Whenever you use another person's ideas or words or facts that are not general knowledge in your writing, you must cite the source of these ideas, words, or facts in order to give credit to their author and to avoid plagiarism. For a tutorial on what to cite, see this page from the St. Martin's Tutorial on Avoiding Plagiarism. Depending on your audience, you will use different methods to cite sources. The citation method you use will vary depending on the requirements of your assignment, your academic discipline, or the publication requirements of journals or other publishers.

How do I get started?

The first step is to determine which citation method you need to use. If you are not sure which citation method you are required to use for an assignment, read the assignment specifics or the class syllabus again carefully. If you still can't find this information, ask your professor. If you're trying to figure out how to go through the steps of a research project from start to finish, try Mike Palmquist's Research Activities and Checklists, a guide from Bedford/St. Martin's with tips and checklists for every stage of the project.

Once you've determined your citation method, you'll need to make sure that you are collecting the necessary information for your works cited page (MLA) or references list (APA) while you are gathering sources. In order to do this, you may want to have a handbook or printout of some basic citation forms at hand while you are doing your research.

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Where do I find out how to format citations?

In the Writing Center, we have many handbooks with current citation information for the four major forms of academic citation formats (MLA, APA, CBE, and CMS (Chicago Style, also called Turabian after the author of the manual)). These guides also contain information on how to format in-text citations (also called parenthetical citations) for each style. There are also many places where you can get this information online:

• The New St. Martin's Handbook Online: This site contains comprehensive, easy-to-use, and current information on citation in the four major formats. For each style, there is an indexed page on how to do in-text citations (MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE) and how to create the works cited or reference list (MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE). In addition, there is a page for each method on the format for informative or bibliographic notes.


• MLA Online: Check out some FAQs, including an extensive explanation of how to cite electronic sources in MLA style. If you will be using MLA style for most papers in your major, you may want to purchase the new 6th edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (2003), which can also be found at many bookstores.


• APA Online: Check out some APA FAQs, a second page of more specific FAQs, and a guide to citing electronic references. If you will be using APA style for most papers in your major, you may want to purchase the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual (2001), which can also be found at many bookstores.

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Will the Writing Center tutors help me with citation?

We are glad to help you with citations. However, we do ask that you find out first which citation method you need to use. We can help you best if you try first to put together citations for your sources using one of the resources above. Then we can help you compare the work you have done with the guidelines to make sure you have done your citations correctly. If you can't determine what category a source falls under, we can help you determine what it is. You may also ask questions through online tutoring, but please limit citation questions to the citation in a particular sentence (include the works cited or reference list citation along with the sentence in question) or to a particular entry from your works cited page or reference list.

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