This guide is designed to connect you to different citation styles. There are tips and examples included for each style. Also, this guide gives you additional information on Zotero (citation management software that's free!) and how to interpret citations (below).

Citation Resources & Builders

Purdue Owl Writing and Citing Lab - Highly recommended resource that covers APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.

Excelsior Online Writing Lab - Covers the writing process, research, critical thinking, presentation, citations, and more.

KnightCite Citation Service via the Library at Calvin University. Copy and paste the bits of your resources and it will auto-generate your citation.

Citation Basics

A citation describes an information source by providing its

• author(s) or editor(s)
• title(s) (article, journal, book, book chapter, web page, etc.)
• publication information (place, publisher, date), and/or…
• point of access (database, URL, date accessed)

There are numerous reasons for citing sources, including:

• avoiding plagiarism (a form of academic misconduct)
• adding credibility to your paper or project
• increasing the findability of your information sources

If you don’t want to do citations “by hand,” there are various citation tools you can use. Ohio University Libraries support Zotero — “a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.”

Finally, Cite Source, from Trinity College Library in Hartford, Connecticut, provides an excellent overview of the concepts of intellectual property, rights and licenses, along with numerous examples of major citation styles.

Identifying the Parts of a Journal Citation

Video created by UTML Library (2017)

How to read other citations including: books, conference proceedings, newspaper articles, and more.