This page contains four sections:
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 By citing the specific document, medium, or other form of communication, you indicate who originally made the contribution AND you allow your reader to find that contribution from which s/he may make their own judgment.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 :
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:
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:
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.