Library Orientation

Citing a source is necessary when you use words, ideas, images or any other form of information taken from another place. Your citations show your reader exactly where you obtained your information and is a standard practice to avoid plagiarism and demonstrate that your work meets academic integrity standards. Listed below are guides for the different citation styles your professors may ask you to use when citing sources for assignments. 

Commonly used styles:

APA Style 
APA (American Psychological Association) style is used by social science disciplines such as communication studies, economics, education, psychology, and sociology. It is also used by business and nursing.

Chicago Style 
Chicago style is the preferred citation style for history and theology.

MLA Style 
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is used to cite sources within English, international languages, theater, cultural studies, and other humanities.

Science and other disciplinary styles:

ACS Style 
ACS (American Chemical Society) style is the standard citation style for chemistry.

AMA Style 
AMA (American Medical Association) style is by disciplines in science and medicine, including biomedical engineering.

ASA Style 
ASA (American Sociological Association) style is the standard citation style for sociology.

CSE Style 
CSE (Council of Science Editors) style is used by science disciplines, including biology.

RefWorks
RefWorks is a useful productivity tool for your research and writing projects. It helps you collect and organize sources in one place, create bibliographies for your papers in the style you need, add full text documents to your account and annotate them, and share sources with others for group projects.

For assistance with citing books, articles, and more, help is available! Use Library Chat or email reference@up.edu to ask your question. We can recommend citation guides and answer specific questions about citations.