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Learning Center Library Guide

What is a Citation?

A citation is reliable way to lead your reader back to the materials you used in your research.

A citation gives credit to an author for their research, writings and ideas.

Most citations include information such as

  • author's name,
  • title of the book, article or website, 
  • name of the magazine or journal, 
  • date published or updated
  • if the information was found in print or online

When you use citations you are

  • giving credit to the authors of material you used,
  • avoiding plagiarism,
  • showing that you know how to use information well,
  • creating credibility for your paper by providing good quality sources and good quality citations for them.

Citation Styles Used at Oakton

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  

Your List of Citations

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.

Smart Student. (2020 Nov. 25). How to Format a Hanging Indent in 3 Seconds: Google Docs and Microsoft Word Tutorial. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/90iLLUx8wQY?si=2xGS0eGGG7x6feyg