Do I Need Help to Cite My Sources?
Whether you are writing an essay or your final dissertation or thesis you will often need to refer to the works of others within your writing. This is to provide you with a background to your own work and also to support what you have to say. Often this will require you to make a quotation, summary or to paraphrase what they have to say. However, you include their information in your writing however you should give credit using a citation and reference.
A citation machine is one way to make that task so much easier. Citations and references always need to be completed in a specific academic writing style and these can vary considerably in the information that you need to collect and also the way that the reference is structured and laid out. Getting them right consistently can be a very difficult task.
When Will You Use Citations?
When you are creating your own paper you will often look at many different sources of information. Often this will be used extensively in your literature review and other areas of your writing. Using information without giving credit to the source would be considered plagiarism and this is treated very seriously in academic writing. So no matter what your source is it must be cited within your writing and listed within your bibliography or references section.
All of the following sources have specific methods of citations and references depending on the style that is required of you:
- Books
- Chapters or pages from books
- Academic Journals
- Newspaper and magazine articles
- Websites
- News reports
What Styles Does Our Citation Machine Cover
Our auto reference tool can provide you with references and citations in all of the most commonly used academic styles that you may be asked to write in as well as many others. It is simple to use; just tell the tool what particular style you want to use the bibliography maker and follow the prompts that it provides to create your correctly structured reference. Our referencing tool can help with all of the following styles and many more:
- APA: The American Psychological Association style is most commonly used in the social sciences and overall if one of the most used styles for formatting in use. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is currently on its 6th edition and has been around since 1929.
- MLA: The Modern Language Association style is most often used in the humanities and the liberal arts. It was originally formed in just 1985 and the MLA Style Manual is currently in its 3rd edition. The MLA handbook for writers of research papers, however, is on its 8th edition.
- Chicago: The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS or CMOS) was originally published by the University of Chicago back in 1906. It is probably the most widely used style within the US and is widely used in publishing in the US and around the world. The manual of style is currently in its 17th edition.
- ALA: The American Library Association citation style is another style that you may be asked to use when making your references. The current 2008 publication of the manual has the requirements for making your citations and references.
- IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers style is widely used in computer science and other technical fields. This style uses a numeric system for citations with the numbers shown within square brackets.
How Different Are Reference Styles?
One of the main reasons for using a citation machine is that each style has very different methods for structuring and organizing your references. So if you are unused to the style that you have been asked to use it can be difficult to get it correct consistently. As an example, the following are the structures for a reference of the book in different styles:
- APA: Last, F. M. (Year Published) Book. City, State: Publisher.
- MLA: Last, First M. Book. City: Publisher, Year Published. Print.
- Chicago: Last, First M. Book Title. City: Publisher, Year of publication.
Italics and punctuation should be done exactly as required if you want to correctly adhere to the style that you are following. There are also significant differences for the layout of each reference depending on the source that you are referencing.
What Mistakes Can Be Avoided If You Cite for Me?
There are many mistakes that can be made when you create your bibliographies and works referenced pages. Using our reference tool, however, will help you to avoid many of this mistakes. The following are the top 10 most common mistakes that people make with their citations and references:
- Incorrect use of italics and bold: within some styles the book title should be italicized, however, if you then reference a journal article the journal will be in italics and not the title of the article.
- Incorrect use of quotation marks: such as when you reference anthologies within MLA.
- Mixed citations styles: some styles allow you to choose between numerical and author-date styles. You should, however, use just one style throughout your paper and not mix the two.
- Listing works in order of importance or appearance within your bibliography when they should have appeared in alphabetical order.
- Failing to list a work cited within your text within your references list or bibliography.
- Confusing multiple works were written by the same author within your citations and bibliography.
- Adding a web address when it is not required for online sources in your references and vice versa.
- Referencing a magazine or a newspaper as a journal and vice versa. Correct methods should be used for the correct sources.
- Citation numbers not aligning with what you have listed in your works referenced section.
- Failing to use correct abbreviations within the references: such as for place names and for different journal titles.
