Academic Citation Styles - A comprehensive guide

A Simple Guide to Citation Styles

When you write for school or university, it's important to show where your information comes from. This is called citing your sources. It helps you:

• Give credit to the original authors

• Avoid plagiarism (copying someone else’s work)

• Let readers find the sources you used

Different subjects use different citation styles. Each style has its own rules. This guide will help you understand the most common ones, what they’re used for, and how to use them. For example, APA style is often used in subjects like psychology, education, and sociology. It focuses on the date of the research, so people know how current the information is.

Here are the citation styles you’ll learn about in this guide:

• APA (American Psychological Association)

• MLA (Modern Language Association)

• Chicago Style

• Harvard Referencing

• IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

• AMA (American Medical Association)

• Turabian

Once you learn the basics of these styles, it will be easier to write clearly and correctly in your assignments.