Citation Styles Overview

Previous

Next

The citation style you use will depend on the subject you are learning and the requirements of your teacher.

Two of the most commonly used citation styles are those of the American Psychological Association (known as APA style, shown below), and the Modern Language Association (known as MLA style). APA is the preferred style for social sciences such as business, psychology, and sociology. MLA is the preferred style for humanities-related areas such as literature, history, and the arts.

MLA and APA- all demand that you collect similar data elements from the sources you use- author, title, date of publication, etc. However each style requires that you note those elements in different orders, giving different emphasis, because of the importance of those elements to the particular academic field of study. For example, the timeliness of publications may be of more importance to the social sciences and sciences, hence the "Date of Publication" appears closer to the beginning of citations in the APA style than it does in MLA.

Some other commonly used styles include AMA (American Medical Association), Chicago, Turabian, CBE (Council of Biology Editors) and Legal (Bluebook). The bibliographic citations for these style manuals are as follows:

Here is a list of subjects or disciplines and the citation style(s) they commonly use:

Helpful guides to these styles can be found at the following Web sites:

NOTE: You should be aware that there is a time lag with some citation styles being more recently updated than others. Some provide more guidance than other on how to cite sources on the Internet and in subscription databases. See Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the APA and MLA Style – How do I document sources from the Web in my works-cited list? for the most recent additions for citing materials from the Internet and subscription databases.

Previous

Next