Citations: Welcome

 
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This guide was designed to provide you with assistance in citing your sources when writing a paper.

There are different styles that format the citation components slightly differently, so select the tab for the style you need and take a look at some examples.

There are a number of different ways to cite resources in your paper. The citation style usually depends on the academic discipline involved. For example:

• MLA is used in the humanities: English, Languages, Speech
• APA is used in the social sciences: Nursing, Education, Psychology
• Chicago/Turabian is used by History, Business, and Fine Arts

​Check with your instructor to make sure you use the required style, and check the tabs above for more information about the specific style.

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• Information is published or recorded in many types of sources: books, periodical articles, websites, blogs, films, even music.

• Regardless of the format of your source, you must give the author or creator credit for their work using a Works Cited or References list along with in-text or parenthetical references to assign credit to the information sources used in your paper. If you do not give credit, you are plagiarizing the author's ideas.
  

• An individual citation contains standard elements such as author, title and date using  a standardized format or "style" (MLA, APA, etc.).

Thanks to librarians at Santa Rosa Junior College for assistance with this guide, including shared content.

Many of the MPC databases provide MLA and APA citation formatting, but they are not always formatted correctly.  Also, other online citation makers are not always accurate. It is important to check their accuracy against a citation style guide like this guide.