The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects.
Proper citation is essential. Citing properly allows your reader or audience to locate the materials you have used. Citations give credit to the authors of quoted or consulted information. For detailed instructions on how to cite within the text of your paper, please consult a style manual listed below.
BU Librarians recommend RefWorks as the best tool to manage citations. Accounts are free for the BU community. RefWorks can automatically create a bibliography in hundreds of styles. Here are some other popular options:
ASME: References
American Society for Mechanical Engineers
Communications of the ACM:
Author Guidelines
Association for Computing Machinery
Most Engineering Societies have style guidelines, Instructions for Authors or Author Guidelines.
Citing Medicine:
the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers
The official style manual for the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and suggested when citing documents from the associated databases MedLine and PubMed.