InfoGuides: Interpreter Resources: APA/MLA Citations

Using Popular Citation Styles

The two most popular styles used in research papers are APA (American Psychological Association) 7th edition and MLA (Modern Language Association) 9th edition. APA is used in the areas of behavioral and social science. MLA is used in the humanities area. If interested in an online citation generator, BibGuru is linked below.

There are formatting rules one follows when writing a research paper (margins, page numbers, titles, capitalization, etc.), creating in-text citations in the body of the paper, and writing full citations in the References or the Works Cited page (the last page). View the APA or the MLA sample paper. Some professors may ask you to submit your papers to Turnitin, a plagiarism checking database.

You must have both the in-text citations and the References or Works Cited page which is a list of all sources you used for your paper.

BibGuru InfoGuide

Why Should We Use Citations?

Why Do We Need to Cite Sources for Papers or Presentations? You

need to acknowledge another person's work and ideas and give him credit.
gain credibility as your paper shows you did the research to evaluate and select the best sources.
avoid plagiarism.
sources are easier to find for the reader.

How Do You Incorporate Sources Within Your Paper or Presentation?

Quoting-Copy a short passage word for word, set off by quotation marks.
Summarizing--Restate the main ideas in your own words which is shorter than the origiinal
Paraphrasing--Take an idea and put it in your own words.