Citing Sources
Citation styles provide rules for formatting your citations or references. Although there are many different citation styles, those most commonly used by students at College of DuPage are American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), and Chicago/Turabian. The style you should use is usually determined by the discipline or course in which you are working. Ask your instructor what style is required or recommended.
Citing Sources: Information to Record
Although every citation style is different, there are some standard elements to record:
- Title (of book or article and journal)
- Author
- Publication Date
- Publisher or source
- Start and end pages (for articles and book chapters)
For electronic sources such as Web pages, you should record this additional information:
- The date you accessed the site
- The digital object identifier (DOI) if there is one
- The URL (Web address) if there is no DOI
Recommended Titles
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
Features in this new edition include: Full-color illustrations with coding to highlight formatting elements; Accessibility guidelines; Bias-free language guidelines, including the adoption of the singular "they."
The Chicago Manual of Style
This seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style has been prepared with an eye toward how we find, create, and cite information that readers are as likely to access from their pockets as from a bookshelf.
ALWD Guide to Legal Citation
ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, Sixth Edition provides the tools needed for all forms of legal writing, using clear explanations and abundant illustrations.
Mastering APA Style
This user-friendly training guide includes groups of instructional exercises and practice tests on various aspects and features of the Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
MLA Handbook
Relied on by generations of writers, the MLA Handbook is published by the Modern Language Association and is the only official, authorized book on MLA style. The new, ninth edition builds on the MLA's unique approach to documenting sources using a template of core elements--facts, common to most sources, like author, title, and publication date--that allows writers to cite any type of work, from books, e-books, and journal articles in databases to song lyrics, online images, social media posts, dissertations, and more.