Cite Sources

What is a citation?

Quick Citation Formatting

The Citation Builder is a quick and easy, fill-in-the-blank tool for creating single citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE formats. Copy and paste formatted citations into your document.

Go to Citation Builder

Citation Style Guides

All academic writing requires the use of citations, but there are multiple styles of citation. Each citation style is part of a larger writing style guide associated with an academic discipline or professional association. The differences among writing and citation styles reflect the priorities and research practices of each academic or professional group.

Some of your classes may allow or require you to use a particular citation style. Below, we’ve listed the most commonly used citation styles, but there are many others. Use whichever style meets the requirements of your assignment.

MLA Citation Guide — Modern Language Association style, used by disciplines in the humanities
APA Citation Guide — American Psychological Association style, used in education, psychology, and many social sciences
CMS Citation Guide — Chicago Manual of Style, and the closely related Turabian style, used in business, history, and the fine arts
AMA Citation Guide — American Medical Association style, used for writing in the medical field
CSE Citation Guide — Council of Science Editors style, used for writing in the natural sciences

Print copies of citation manuals are available at the Ask Us desk.

Citation Management

For larger projects, there are tools that enable you to manage references, import citations from online databases and incorporate references into Word documents. For more information about these tools, visit Citation Management.