Academic writing, whether theses, assignments, reports or scholarly articles, often involves summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting sources of information that need to be cited. Knowing how to cite another person's work properly helps you to:
Citation styles are a set of rules or standards established by a specific society, association, or publisher for documenting various sources of information. These sources of information may include journal publications, books, thesis, online sources, unpublished manuscripts, magazines, etc. Detailed descriptions of the citation styles (often known as Style Manuals or Publication Manuals) can be found on the websites of those societies, associations or publishers who set and maintain the citation standards. Styles may be revised from time to time in which case new or up-dated Manuals are released. It is a good practice to consult the original Publication Manuals for updates.
Different disciplines use different citation styles therefore it is important to know which citation style is most popular in your discipline. Ask your instructor which citation styles you should use in your assignments.
Consult the library's guide to the most popular citation styles:
Citing sources manually can be very time intensive. Citation management software (i.e., citation managers) can help save you time by formatting in-text citations and bibliographies for you in the citation style of your choice. In addition to being a great tool for academic writing, citation managers can also help you collect, organize, and annotate information sources (including full-text PDFs) for other purposes.
Please see our citation management library guide for more information: