Cite It Right - Quick Guide for Citations

Three styles are commonly used at Oakton.

• MLA  - Modern Language Association
       MLA citation style is primarily used for research papers in English classes. 
• APA - American Psychological Association
       APA citation style is primarily used for research papers in nursing and social sciences classes.
• Chicago Manual of Style
      Chicago Style is often used for research papers in history or humanities classes.

Citation styles give you rules crafting citations.

• what information is needed for each type of source,
• what order to arrange the information, and
• how to create a list of citations for a Works Cited, References, or Bibliography page  

When you are finishing your research paper, it's important to gather up all of your sources and make a list of complete citations for each source.

That list has a different name in each citation style.

• MLA - Works Cited
• APA - References
• Chicago - Bibliography

Even though the lists have different names they have many features in common.

• Start your list of citations on a new page
• Center the title of your citation list
• Arrange the citations in alphabetical order by the last name of the author
•         or, if there is no author, by the first major word in the title.
• Double space the information in the list
• Use a hanging indent for each entry
• Do not number items in the list of citations

Google Docs and Microsoft Word both offer options for formatting your citations with the required "hanging indent."

You can choose to use format special options from toolbar at the top of the page or you can use the margin setting option shown in the video below.