Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)
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.
Citing Your Sources
Proper citation is an essential aspect of scholarship. Citing properly allows your reader or audience to locate the materials you have used. Most importantly, 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 to create your bibliography.
BU Librarians recommend RefWorks as a tool to manage citations.
Accounts are free for the BU community, and most importantly RefWorks can automatically create a bibliography in hundreds of styles.
Here are some easy web options and a Guide to Creating Bibliographies.
MLA (Modern Languages Association) Style
MLA Handbook by
The Modern Language Association, the authority on research and writing, takes a fresh look at documenting sources in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. Works are published today in a dizzying range of formats. A book, for example, may be read in print, online, or as an e-book--or perhaps listened to in an audio version. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. Previous editions of the MLA Handbook provided separate instructions for each format, and additional instructions were required for new formats. In this groundbreaking new edition of its best-selling handbook, the MLA recommends instead one universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any type of source. Shorter and redesigned for easy use, the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook guides writers through the principles behind evaluating sources for their research. It then shows them how to cite sources in their writing and create useful entries for the works-cited list. More than just a new edition, this is a new MLA style.
Location: Mugar Reference LB2369 G53Publication Date: 8th edition 2016
Chicago Style
The Chicago Manual of Style by
Originally written in 1906, this tome has a rich history of providing quality guidelines for citing works and creating bibliographies. The library has a subscription to the full online version. The website also offers a citation quick guide that has many examples. The 17th edition is the most recent, published in 2017.
Location: Mugar Reference Z253 U69
Turabian
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by
The famous work by Kate Turabian, the latest edition (the 6th, published in 1996) was altered to conform with the guidelines set in The Chicago Manual of Style.
