Citation and Style Guides

Citation and Style Guides

Here is a list of the most commonly used citation and style guides and resources. For Excellence in Literature, you will be using MLA citations, but I suggest becoming familiar with other guides so that you’ll be prepared to use them when required for other subjects.

MLA

• Online Writing Lab (OWL) from Purdue University (in-text and bibliography/works cited)
• Research and Documentation Online from Bedford/St. Martin’s (in-text and bibliography/works cited)
• MLA Citation Guide from Simon Fraser University Library
• Modern Language Association (contains FAQs)
• How to cite books accessed online, courtesy of College of San Mateo Library

Chicago

• Chicago Manual of Style – Your local library may provide online access.
• Research and Documentation Online from Bedford/St. Martin’s (in-text, notes and bibliography)

APA

• Online Writing Lab (OWL) from Purdue University (in-text and bibliography/references)
• Research and Documentation Online from Bedford/St. Martin’s (in-text and bibliography/references)
• American Psychological Association Style Guide (contains basic tutorial, tutorial about changes in the 6th edition, and FAQs)

CSE

• Research and Documentation Online from Bedford/St. Martin’s (in-text and bibliography/references)

Turabian

• Turabian Citation Guide from The University of Chicago Press (in-text and bibliography)

A few last notes

The classic orange Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has always been my favorite style and citation guide. There are newer editions, and they are good, but this old orange one is usually the first one I reach for. Each time I pick it up, I learn something new or wander off on a delightful rabbit trail of style or citation I had forgotten about.

There are a few major works that have their own citation methods. These include:

• Bible citations by book, chapter and verse (e.g. John 3:16)
• Shakespeare notation by play, act, scene, and line numbers (e.g. The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2, 4–8)
• Stephanus pagination for Plato and Plutarch (e.g. (17a-42a) Apologia Socratis)
• Bekker numbers for Aristotle’s works (e.g. (1447a) Poetics)

NOTE: Portions of this list of citation and style guides originally appeared on the website of the Duke University Library, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 United States License.