Citation Styles Guide: APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Turabian Explained

Posted on by Holly Symbian

Citation styles are a set of guidelines to organize and format various sources cited in your academic writing. These provide all the standards on how to format work lists, in-text, margins, headings, etc.

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Various types of academic disciplines use different citation styles. Examples of some common citation styles are the American Psychological Association (APA), IEEE, Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago/Turabian, etc.

citation styles guide

Introduction to Citation Styles: Why They Matter

A citation style dictates all the required data and information and guides how these are ordered with proper punctuation and formatting.

According to the Essay Writing Service experts, citation style really matters due to the following reasons:

  • Authority and Credibility: Proper citation lends a lot of credibility to your work by showing that you are really engaged with the preexisting research ideas. It also demonstrated that you have established all your starting arguments with a good knowledge of the subject.
  • Academic Integrity: You must cite the sources to avoid plagiarism. This is a very crucial part of your academic writing.
  • Reader Navigation: Various citation styles provide a good format for your writing content and help your readers know about the original sources. Thus, it is already essential for information verification.
  • Disciplinary Standards: Different citation styles are used in various writing fields, such as APA, Chicago, or MLA formats. Thus, you always need to choose the correct writing type for each type of writing.
  • Clarity and Organization: A consistent style of citation also helps to organize your references more systematically. This makes your readers interested in following your stated arguments.

Overview of Popular Citation Styles

  • MLA (Modern Language Association): This writing style is very commonly used for student research papers. It mainly focuses on quotations, punctuation and source citations.
  • Chicago/Turabian: This writing style is mostly used in history, business or fine arts. This Chicago Style Manual is also known as the Turabian style.
  • IEEE: This is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and this style is commonly used for research papers in various branches of engineering like computer science, electrical engineering, etc.
  • APA: This citation style is widely used in psychology, social science and education.
  • Vancouver: This numeric-style citation is used in health, biochemistry, and other branches of science. These in-text citations are used in either superscript or bracketed numbers. The same number is used throughout your paper to refer to the given sources.
  • Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC): This legal style document is practised in Australia.

Citation Formats – What are the Different Types of Citation Formats?

  • MLA: This is the Modern Language Association citation style, mostly used in humanities.
  • APA: This style is used by the American Psychological Association. It does not have any specific format. Here, you need to identify the source material.
  • Chicago: This style is commonly used in journals and history papers as a bibliography and notes system. It also contains the author and date.
  • AMA: This citation style is used by the American Medical Association (AMA) and is based on a documentary-note writing style along with in-text numbers.
  • Turabian: It is a very simple citation style and is mostly used by students to write academic papers. It has 2 variations – the author-date system and the documentary note system.
  • Harvard: It is also known as the “author-date style” and uses all the in-text citations containing the author’s name and the date.

Choosing the Right Citation Style for Your Work

According to the Research Methodologies experts, your chosen citation style must be dictated by your discipline. Sometimes, your instructor can suggest writing in any particular style.

In certain cases, you do not need to use any particular writing style, and you can choose it on your own. Below are a few tips:

  • Chicago Notes for the Architecture and Landscape Architecture
  • Chicago Notes for art
  • Chicago notes for history
  • MLA for dance
  • MLA for drama
  • Chicago Notes for Ethnomusicology
  • Chicago notes for music
  • Chicago Notes for Music History
  • Chicago Author-Date citation for Urban Design & Planning

master citation styles

Common Citation Mistakes to Avoid

As per the Turabian Research Paper Writing Service experts, a few of the commonest citation mistakes are as follows:

  • Missing References: This is one of the most common citation mistakes committed by students. Citations and references always come together. Any citation in a text needs a reference on the reference page or in the bibliography part. Sometimes, students need to cite it in the paper. In order to avoid this, you need to check each and every in-text citation that leads to any reference in the paper.
  • Citing In Alphabetical Order: The reference list, cited work, and bibliography citations cannot be well arranged in your paper. All types of citation styles ask you to put these citations in alphabetical order by the citation’s first element. This can be the author’s last name, corporation, title, etc. Numbers are put in alphabetical order.
  • Missing The Page Numbers: It is very important for you to add the correct page numbers to the citations. This needs to be done due to in-text and referee citations. These guide your readers through your research paper.
  • Not Citing the Paraphrased Information: When you paraphrase any information in an academic paper, you always need to include the citation in the text and reference pages. If you quote the information incorrectly or do not cite the paraphrased information, it will be considered plagiarism.
  • Using Outdated Resources: None of the resources are equally good. Thus, you always need to ensure that all the resources you use for writing your paper are updated, relevant, accurate, and authoritative.

Citation Tools and Resources for Students

According to the Custom APA Paper Writing Service, expert citation tools enable you to:

  • Build and star all the reference collections
  • Manage the citation within folders
  • Write the bibliographies
  • Auto format and insert all the citations on your paper

End note

  • It is a current industry standard citation management tool
  • Millions of researchers use it for searching online bibliographic databases
  • It is free to many faculties

Mendeley

  • It is a citation management tool offering basic citation management features.
  • It enables good social networking with other researchers
  • It has a good crowd-sourced database

How to Format In-Text Citations and Reference Lists

The Writing an Essay in MLA Format say that in-text citations appear in the body of the table, figure, etc. These enable the readers to locate the corresponding entries in the reference list. The In-text citations are typically presented in the following ways:

  • Parenthetical Citation: here, the author’s name and the data appear within the parentheses.
  • Narrative Citation: Here, the author’s name appears in the text, and the date within the parentheses.
  • Direct quotation: While including a quote in writing, your in-text citation needs to include the author, date and page number.
  • Paraphrasing: while you are paraphrasing, you do not need to prove any page number of Para number in the in-text citation. You might include one that can help the readers locate the relevant passages.
  • Secondary citations: Here, you need to cite all the quotes from which your reference has been taken. Try to locate the original source.
  • In-text citation: It contains the name of the original author.

Conclusion: Mastering Citation Styles for Academic Success

You can always master the citation styles for academic success by following the tips in this blog. This can be done with the help of the following:

  • Understanding the foundation of your academic writing: This is a very crucial part of your writing.
  • Think of a cohesive argument: A very strong argument always enhances your writing and citation standards.
  • Incorporate all the critical analysis: All the critical analysis you do needs to be carefully integrated into your writing.
  • Skillfully insert the paraphrasing and quotations: You must always insert and paraphrase your quotations carefully.
  • Navigate through different citation styles: A way to navigate through various citation styles and select the best one.
  • Always select the best citation style suitable for your subject matter: This is always one of the most essential things while writing your citations. Each type of citation style is suitable for each kind of writing. Thus, you always need to make a very wise selection regarding this matter.

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