This page contains four sections: 

• Components of a Citation
• Citation Style Guides
• Examples

Need More Help? 

When presenting or referring to the work of others, whether as a direct quote or by paraphrasing, you must provide the appropriate attribution.  By citing the specific document, medium, or other form of communication, you indicate who originally made the contribution AND you allow your reader to find that contribution from which s/he may make their own judgment.  Failure to provide appropriate attribution is considered plagiarism.

Citations need to be both consistent, so the reader can recognize what the item is (book, journal article, film, government document, etc.), and complete, so that s/he can find it. 

Citations should always include these five elements : 

• Author
  The person, persons or group (corporation, government agency, institution, etc.) that is responsible for the content of the work. 
   
• Title
  What the work is called. 
   
• Date of Publication
  When the work was made available; depending on the physical format of the material, this could be listed as:
  • year,
  • month and year, or
  • day, month and year. 
     
• Source
  Where the work comes from.  For books, this would be the publisher; for journal articles, this would be the title of the journal, for government documents, the agency name, for technical reports, the corporation or agency, etc.
   
• Location
  Any information that's needed to find the work within/from the source; this varies with format.  For books the location would the city of the publisher; for journal articles it would be the volume, issue and pages; for items only published online this could be an URL or a DOI (digital object identifier).

How these elements are ordered in the citation and what punctuation, spacing, and font style (italics, bold) are used depends on the citation style you are asked to use. 

If your instructor does not specify, consider using one of these styles: 

• American Chemical Society (ACS) Style Guide
  Chapter 14 contains information on formatting references.
   
• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  •  Manuscript Submission
    Scroll down to page 29 to find information about formatting references. 
     
• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 6th edition. 
  Commonly referred to as "APA Style", this citation format is easily adapted for most engineering fields.  Although the full manual is not availalbe online, there is quick guide to this style.

Other Journal Publisher Style Guides and Manuals 

Each journal will usually have a section on its website labeled "Guide for Authors," "Information for Authors," or "Submitting an article."  This is were you can usually find what citation style the journal uses and see examples of at least a book or journal article reference.  Some journals no longer make this information available but instead, refer the potential author to their preferred citation management software (ex., EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, etc.) where their journal template is available. 

The following citations use the APA (American Psychological Association) style to show the components: 

1. Shepherd, R., Frost, J. D. (1995). Failures in civil engineering: Structural, foundation, and geoenvironmental case studies. New York: American Society of Civil Engineers
   
   ​This citation is for a book and contains the following information: 
   • Authors: R. Shepherd and J.D. Frost
   • Title: Failures in civil engineering: structural, foundation, and geoenvironmental case studies
   • Date of Publication: 1995
   • Source: American Society of Civil Engineers 
   • Location: New York
      
2. Plaut, R. H. (2008). Snap Loads and Torsional Oscillations of the Original Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 309(3), 613-636. doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2007.07.057 
   
   ​This citation is for a journal article and contains the following information: 
   • Author: R.H. Plaut
   • Title: Snap loads and torsional oscillations of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge
   • Date of Publication: 2008
   • Source: Journal of Sound and Vibration 
   • Location: Volume 309, issue 3, pages 613 to 636;  doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2007.07.057 

The following are the same two examples from above but this time cited in IEEE Style.  Still the same information but note the differences in the order of the components, the punctuation used in between components and in some cases the different way the component is written. 

1. R. Shepherd and J. D. Frost,  Failures in civil engineering: Structural, foundation, and geoenvironmental case studies.  New York, NY, USA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1995.
    
2. R. H. Plaut, "Snap Loads and Torsional Oscillations of the Original Tacoma Narrows Bridge." J. Sound Vib., vol. 309, no. 3, pp. 613-636, Mar. 2008.