What is a citation?

Here you’ll find extensive support for APA, MLA, and Chicago documentation styles. This section features instructional videos that show you how to set up your papers in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats, interactive checklists, and visual support for both in-text documenting and referencing at the end of your paper. If you’re new to documentation or just need a refresher, the Citations & Documentation area can help.

Research papers at the college level will require some kind of documentation style. Documentation styles provide students, teachers, and researchers standards and specifications to follow for paper set up in-text documentation, and references. They also will have recommendations for writing style, word choice, and in some cases, organization.

The most common documentation styles are APA (from the American Psychological Association) and MLA (from the Modern Language Association), and some fields require Chicago Style (from the University of Chicago Press).

While it may feel tedious learning the different aspects of a documentation style, it’s important to remember following style guidelines helps add credibility to your writing by providing you with a structured method for sharing your research with your audience.

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). Located at: https://owl.excelsior.edu/ . This site is licensed under a https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

University of Toronto Library, Canada with link info at: https://library.utm.utoronto.ca/ .