Research Guides: Citation Style Guides and Management Tools: Home

How to Use this Guide

Welcome! This guide is designed to help you write better, avoid plagarism, and impress your professors with clear, confident citations and references. This guide includes information on writing and publication in various disciplines, including formatting manuscripts and cite sources. This guide is here to support you—not stress you out. Skim it, search it, read it beginnning to end if you choose. Got questions? Library staff is here to help.
Use the tabs on the left for information on the AP, APA, ASA, Chicago/Turabian, MLA, and Science citation styles and information on citing government information. Need Help? Library support is just a click away! Use the links below the side bar tabs to chat with a librarian and view frequently asked questions.

You can click here to find information on managing your research by using the citation management tool RefWorks.

Why Should You Care About Referencing?

Referencing is about giving credit where it’s due, and it’s one of the main ways we build trust and credibility in academic work. Using someone else’s ideas without citing them is plagiarism, like stealing someone’s work and putting your name on it. It’s a big deal, with real academic and even legal consequences.

Janice R. and Todd Taylor (2006, The Columbia Guide to Online Style) break referencing down into five key principles:

Intellectual Property – Ideas are owned. If you dont give credit, it’s theft. It’s about more than rules—it’s about ethics and contributing to a larger conversation in your field.
Access –Giving anyone the ability to check your sources.
Economy – Including enough information for someone to find the source.
Transparency – A clear citation style helps others follow your thinking and research trail.
Standardization – Citations make sense across subjects and disciplines.

Still wondering why it really matters? Colin Neville (2007, The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism) lists 9 reasons to cite your sources:

To trace the origins of ideas
To connect ideas into a bigger picture
To discover and develop your own voice
To make your arguments stronger
To share knowledge with others
To show respect for other scholars
To show who and what influenced your thinking
To meet grading criteria
And yes—to avoid plagiarism

Why Should I Cite?
Take a look at this tutorial for more information on sources.

Academic Integrity

What sort of information needs to be cited and how can you respect it in your research? Find out more by viewing this video on academic integrity