This guide provides useful tips such as creating in-text citations, bibliographies and reference lists for the following three citation styles:
American Psychological Association (APA) (Indicate edition #)
Modern Language Association (MLA) (Indicate edition #)
Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) (Indicate edition #)
Do consult your instructor or Teaching & Learning Centre (TLC) for questions pertaining to the use of a specific citation style and sources that can be cited.
To be a responsible researcher by acknowledging the works of other authors and respecting their intellectual property.
To avoid plagiarism by referencing other authors' concepts and words and thereby eliminating plagiarism.
To track the sources used in the paper. Citation also enables readers to track the sources used in the research paper easily, which can be helpful for your future research.
You must cite when quoting words, thoughts or ideas from another author or when paraphrasing or summarising other authors' ideas. Besides books and journal articles, you are also required to cite videos, statistics, social media posts, podcasts or even images used in your academic paper.
Using someone else's content without giving appropriate credit is considered plagiarism. Plagiarism, whether deliberate or inadvertent, is regarded as academic dishonesty.
Self-plagiarism is defined as using sections from your own previous assignments or academic paper without referencing them.
The only way to avoid plagiarism is to cite consistently and accurately. Get to know more about Academic Integrity and plagiarism by completing the online modules designed by our Teaching and Learning Centre.
CMOS provides users with two different methods for documenting sources:
This system uses Author-Date parenthetical citations in the paper to cite the author's last name and the year of publication. Each parenthetical citation corresponds to an entry on a References page that is at the end of the paper.
Author – Date (sample citations)
This system uses numbered footnotes in the paper to direct the reader to a shortened citation at the bottom of the page. The footnotes correspond to a full citation on a Bibliography page that is at the end of the paper.