Citation Help

As a student, you will be using books, articles, and other sources of information for your research assignments. When you use other sources of information in your assignments, you will need to use a citation to give credit to the original authors. A citation also provides all the necessary information your reader needs to find the source(s) you used. Most citations have similar information, such as the author, title, date and location of the source. Many different citations styles exist and each have different formats.

In this research guide, you will read about the most common citation styles (APA, MLA, and Chicago) and links will be provided that will direct you to sources that will help you create citations and learn more about the specific writing style.

If you need additional assistance with citations, use our ask-a-librarian service to contact a librarian. You can also contact the Snow College Writing Center for writing and citation help.

MLA (Modern Language Association) is the citation and writing style used in the humanities, including English classes. The following resources will help you learn how to format MLA citations.

• MLA Style Website. Official website of the MLA publication style providing guidance for citations, formatting, works cited pages and more.
• MLA Style Guide. For more in-depth guidance with MLA, including direct links to worksheets, quick guides, sample papers and more.

APA (American Psychological Association) is the citation style used for research in the social and behavioral sciences, business, education, and the sciences. The following resources will help you learn how to format APA citations.

• APA Style Website. Guidance on how to format your paper, create citations, set-up your title page and view sample papers.
• APA Style Guide. For more in-depth guidance with APA, including hand-outs, MS Word and Google Templates, and more.

Chicago is commonly used in history, literature and art research.  The following resources will help you learn how to create Chicago citations.

• Chicago Manual of Style Online. Provides sample citations for both author-date and notes and bibliography systems. 
• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Chicago Style. A comprehensive overview of the Chicago Style, 17th edition. Provides examples of citations and a citation generator.

Turabian style is a specific Chicago style designated for students in history, literature, history and the arts.  This subset of Chicago Style is shorter, but, is a part of the Chicago Style. The following resources will help you learn how to create Turabian citations.

• Turabian Citation Quick Guide. Providing examples of citations for both author-date and notes-bibliography style.

• ACS Style Quick Guide. ACS (American Chemical Society) style is uniquely used in the field of chemistry research. Provides example citations for a variety of sources, including scientific journals, websites, newspapers and more.
• IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) style is most often used in engineering, computer science and other technological
• National Library of Medicine (NLM) style is used for authors, editors and publishers in medical research.
• American Mathematical Society (AMS). Specific to the field of Math, this style is used most often for publishing in AMS journals.
• American Sociological Association (ASA) Style Guide. Provides examples of in-text and reference list citations. This style is specific to research in sociology fields.