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Citation Guides: Home

Citation Styles

Different academic disciplines use different citation styles, so the style that you use should be selected based on the subject of your paper and your professor's requirements for the assignment.  The most common citation styles include:

APA Citation Guide 
APA (American Psychological Association) is commonly used in the social sciences.

MLA Citation Guide
MLA (Modern Language Association) is commonly used in the humanities.

Chicago Citation Guide
Chicago is used in history and various other disciplines.

What Are Citations and Why Are They Necessary?

Whenever you do research to write a paper or create a project, it is essential that you document the sources that you used.  When you cite your sources, you lend authority and credibility to your work by providing evidence for your research and by helping your reader to determine how you drew upon the work of others to support your own original argument and ideas.  Citing your information sources also shows respect to the authors whose work you benefited from, and helps you avoid plagiarism (one form of academic dishonesty).  Please see the Library Tutorials Guide for tutorials on citation and academic honesty.

You must include a citation if you quote directly from a source, but also if you paraphrase, summarize, or otherwise incorporate another author's opinions or ideas.  It is also important that you cite the sources in which you found facts, information, data, and visuals (images, charts, or graphs) that you used in your work.

Citing AI

If your professor allows the use of generative AI tools in your work and assignments, you should indicate which AI platform and how it was used. Below are a few suggestions for how you can cite/indicate the use of generative AI in your work.

  • “The author(s) generated this text in part with Chat GPT-3. Upon generating draft language, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the language. I/We take ultimate responsibility for the content.” 
  • “The author(s) declare that this draft was [condensed, summarized, iterated upon, etc.] using [Chat GPT-3 or application name] on [DATE]. I/We take ultimate responsibility for the content. ” 
  • “To develop a framework for this essay, I entered the following prompt into Chat GPT-3 on [DATE]: [PROMPT FED INTO AI]”. 

Quick Question?

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