Help with Citations

It's that time of year again! Research papers will be due soon.  To back up your arguments and tell your professors where you got your information, you'll need to write clear and accurate citations. This can be a little tricky. 

The Help links are in the bottom left corner of the CSI Library home page.

Check the link to APA & MLA Styles.  These are the two most commonly used report writing styles at CSI. 

This screen has four sections.

The first gives you a link to directions for changing several of the defaults in Microsoft Word.  This is about the only time that APA and MLA style rules agree.  Before you start typing your paper, set the margins, font, and spacing of lines and paragraphs.

The second section gives links to help with APA style.  The best site overall is the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University.  It begins with the basic rules for laying out your paper, then goes on to give loads of examples of citations, both for your reference page and for in-text citations. 

This section of the Help screen also provides PowerPoints that demonstrate how the parts of citations go together.  I have found that many students get flustered while writing up their citations because they try to work out all the details at once in their heads.  A much simpler way is to look at the pieces of each citation one at a time: How do I write the name of the author? How do I write the date? and so on.

Section three covers guides to MLA style.  Again, the best overall site is the one from Purdue, because it looks at all the parts of a research paper.   Citation-building examples are in video, provided by the librarians at North Central College in Illinois.  

The last section links to NoodleBib Express, one of many websites designed to help you put our citations together.  It is up to date with the recent changes in APA and MLA formats, and offers advice for each part of a citation.  I will write more about NoodleBib in a future blog post.