Step 3: So many details, so little

Step 3: So many details, so little time! Locate the appropriate style manual.
Don’t worry—no one can remember all the different citation conventions used in all the different university disciplines! Citing your sources appropriately is a matter of:

determining which style your instructor wants you to use,
finding the appropriate style manual, and
copying the “formula” it gives for each type of source you use.
First, carefully read the assignment to determine what citation style your instructor wants you to use (APA, MLA, Chicago, and CSE are the most common). If s/he doesn’t specify a citation style in the assignment, check your syllabus, coursepack, and/or Blackboard site. If you can’t find the citation style in any of those places, ask your instructor what style s/he prefers.

Second, academic citation styles follow specific formats, so making an educated guess about how to structure your citations and works cited page is usually not a good idea. Instead, find the specified style manual in the reference section of the library, on the reference shelf in the Writing Center, or online.

Finally, style manuals provide easy-to-follow formulas for your citations. For example, the MLA handbook provides the following format for citing a book by a single author:

Author’s name. Title of the book. Publication information.

You can use this formula for your own citation by simply plugging in the information called for, following the format of the formula itself. Here’s an example of how that might look:

Berlage, Gai Ingham. Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History. Westport: Greenwood, 1994.

If you’d like more information on citation styles, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.