Three citation styles - Citations - Citing sources

Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Three citation styles
Citations
Citing sources

Researchers have been publishing research reports for more than four centuries. In that long tradition of citing sources, researchers have developed many distinctive citation systems. Here we will cover the three most popular citation styles for academic research:

✵ Chicago style (also known as Turabian style), from the University of Chicago Press. This style is widely used in the humanities and qualitative social sciences.

✵ MLA style, from the Modern Language Association. This style is widely used in literary studies.

✵ APA style, from the American Psychological Association. This style is widely used in the quantitative social sciences.

The distinctive features of each style are described at the beginning of their respective chapters.

In all three styles, you must identify citations in two places: in your text and in a separate list of sources at the end. First, you must indicate in your text where you used a source and what parts of a source you used. For Chicago style, you do that with notes: insert a raised number (superscript) in the text to indicate where you used the source and add a footnote to identify the source and the page(s) you used.

Most Americans think of homelessness as a recent development, but it has always been part of the American heritage. Beggars had long been common in London,1 which led early Americans to think of homeless beggars as a normal feature of city life. Of course, America's early cities did not have extensive slums, which were the source of most of London's beggars. Nevertheless . . .

1. Tim Hitchcock, “Begging on the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 3 ( July 2005): 489.

For MLA and APA style, you do not use notes but insert a brief parenthetical reference with the page number(s) and just enough information to find the source in your list at the end:

MLA:

Most Americans think of homelessness as a recent development, but it has always been part of the American heritage. Beggars had long been common in London (Hitchcock 489), which led . . .

APA:

Most Americans think of homelessness as a recent development, but it has always been part of the American heritage. Beggars had long been common in London (Hitchcock, 2005, p. 489), which led . . .

Then at the end of your paper, you include an alphabetical list of all your sources, with complete bibliographical information for each.

Don't let yourself become overwhelmed by all the picky details you have to get right. Few researchers try to remember even half of them. Experienced researchers learn the basic form for common citations, let their word processor create a first draft, and then consult a book like this one to check the details.