Citing Your Sources
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Online Manuals
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IEEE Editorial Style ManualThe Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers format is used in engineering, and this guide serves as a style manual as well as how to format an article for submission to an IEEE journal. Examples are given on how to cite periodicals, books, patents, and more.
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Chicago Manual of StyleThe Chicago Manual of Style Online, from the University of Chicago, is the complete guide to the Chicago style of writing and citation. Full-text access to the 16th and 17th editions of the manual are available, as well as a Citation Quick Guide, tutorials, and more.
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MLA Formatting and Style Guide / Purdue OWLMLA (Modern Language Association) is most commonly used in the humanities. This guide gives citing examples for books, articles, electronic periodicals, images, sound, and more.
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APA Formatting and Style Guide / Purdue OWLAPA (American Psychological Association) style is commonly used in the social sciences. This guide is created and maintained by the Purdue OWL.
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Turabian Citation Guide / University of Chicago PressThe Turabian style (named for Kate Turabian) is a modified version of the Chicago style and is used often in the arts and humanities. This guide offers citing information on books, journal articles, magazine articles, online sources, and more.
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CSE Quick Citation Guide / Penn StateThe Council of Science Editors (previously known as the Council of Biology Editors) format is most often used in the sciences. This guide is based on the 2006 manual; a new edition will be published May 2014.
Department Style Guides
What citation style does your major use?
When writing for an assignment, preparing an article for publication, or listing your publications on your curriculum vita, it's important to know the citation style common to your discipline.
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Complete Discipline Listing (Purdue OWL)A list of major disciplines and what citation styles they tend to use, including links to those styles.
Citing Tools & Reference Management
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help collect and organize your citations as you find them, and make citing your works easier in the text and in creating the bibliography.
Check out our research guide for more info!
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EndNoteEndNote is owned by the same company that owns the Web of Science database, to which the Library subscribes. EndNote Basic is web-based and free but limited in functionality; the desktop version of EndNote greatly expands on functionality and organization, but is not cheap.
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MendeleyMendeley, owned by Elsevier, is free for a basic account but more storage comes for a fee. Track your citations, search the Mendeley pool of works cited or saved by others, and establish your social profile.
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ZoteroZotero is an open source reference management tool that helps you to collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Basic plans are free and more storage is available for a fee.
Citation Generators
Citation generators make creating a citation easier than writing it yourself, but they may not always do so correctly for the citation style. They work with the metadata (author, title, journal name, etc.) as it's provided, so you should always proofread your list of references to make sure it looks the way it should.
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BibMe.orgBibliography maker.
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EasyBibFree bibliography and citation maker.
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ZoteroBib citation generatorZoteroBib is a free citation generator from the company that created the citation management tool Zotero. ZoteroBib will generate citations from URL metadata and saves the citations to create a bibliography in the citation style of your choice.