Documenting Your Sources
You can find all of this information, including links and style manuals, at Old Dominion's Perry Library Style Guide!
On this page you will find:
NOTE: All examples on this page deal with one author texts.
MLA Citation
MLA citation is used to refer readers to the appropriate reference on the Works Cited page following the text.
This style has two methods:
1) You identify the author in the text. The page reference is then given immediately after the reference:
- In History of the Tornado Women, Samuel Kline states that "these women are the only population on earth to worship the hibiscus" (72).
On the Works Cited page, the reference would then be cited as:
- Kline, Samuel. History of the Tornado Women. Philadelphia: Pascal, 1994.
2) You identify both author and page number in the citation rather than in the text:
- Other anthropologists disgree with Kline's assumption, stating that another culture found on the coast of New Jersey uses the hibiscus as a representation of their deity (Galliger 98).
Again the reference would be cited on the Works Cited page.
For information on documenting other types of sources in MLA citation, click on one these links:
Back to the top
APA Citation
APA citation is most commonly used in the social sciences. APA style differs from MLA style in two main ways. First, in APA the text citation includes a comma [(Galliger, 98)]. Second, the year of publication immediately follows the author's name on the Works Cited page.
On the Works Cited page, the reference would be listed as:
- Galliger, J.L. (1995). Symbols and Deities of Island Cultures. New York: Freon.
For information on documenting different types of sources in APA, try this link:
Back to the top
CMS or Turabian Citation
The Chicago Manual of Style, or Turabian Style, is the style most commonly used for footnotes and endnotes.
Footnotes are placed at the bottom of the page:
- 1. Tomkins, Sally. Plant Worship Among Modern Societies (Los Angeles: Phelps, 1995) 26.
Within the text, the number in front of the footnote would be placed immediately after the end punctuation of the idea or quote that is referenced:
- According to ethnographic research, the Singi people of the South Seas use the potted date tree as a symbol of fertility during religious rituals, provided it is flowering at the time.1
Endnote documentation in CMS looks the same in the text, but the notes appear at the end of the text rather than at the bottom of the page.
Back to the top
Citing Web Sources
Sources found on the World Wide Web are cited differently in different documentation styles. In other words, MLA, APA and CMS all have their own version of Web citation.
For more information, refer to MLA, APA, or CMS links or click on one of these links:
Back to the top
Common Citation Problems
Use the checklist below to help you avoid common mistakes students make when using citation.
- Make sure your spacing and punctuation are correct on your Works Cited page, in your footnotes, or in your endnotes.
- Make sure your punctuation is correct in the in-text citations.
- Make sure you have used the proper documentation style. If your assignment sheet does not specify a particular style, check with your instructor.
- Make sure you use the proper citation method for each source, based on the type of source and author.
- Make sure you cite not only direct quotations but also ideas obtained from a source. Ideas found in a wide variety of sources or ideas which are considered "common knowledge" do not need to be cited. Ask your instructor how he or she defines "common knowledge," since different disciplines consider different types of knowledge to be commonly known. All ideas unique to an author or paraphrased from a source must be cited. If you don't cite such ideas, you are plagiarizing.
Back to the top
Ideas for this page have been adapted from The Scribner Handbook for Writers. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
Related links:
