Citing Sources 

A Citation or Bibliographic Citation is a reference to a published or unpublished work.

Information usually includes:

• For a book: author, title, publisher, and date.
• For an article: author, title of the article, title of the periodical, volume, pages, date, and database info.

Resources are cited in a student paper and citations are listed at the end of the paper.

Ask your instructor which format he/she prefers you to use for citing resources. APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) are the most commonly used at UW-La Crosse.

These are comprehensive citation guides recommended by librarians.

• The OWL at Purdue
  • APA Formatting at Style Guide
  • MLA 2009 Formatting and Style Guide
  • Chicago Manual of Style
  • ASA (Sociology)


• Duke University's Citing Sources (APA, MLA, Chicago, CSE)
  Note that Duke's excellent site has not yet (Aug. 2009) been updated for the latest APA 6th edition.
  
  
• Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker (MLA, APA, Chicago, CSE)
  Note the 2009 MLA Update link (Aug. 2009).
  Note that this site has not yet (Aug. 2009) been updated for the latest APA 6th edition.

PURPOSE:

• The purpose of the citation is to allow the information to be retrieved again. Make sure that the information provided in the citation will allow a repeat of the process.

ACCURACY:

• Copy the web addresses exactly as they are found. Extraneous spaces, missing spaces, errors in upper/lower case characters, and misleading symbols in URL's will usually cause failure in retrieval. Copy/Paste the URL into the citation whenever possible.

E-MAILS:

• When citing an e-mail, listserv or newsgroup, you have an ethical obligation to be able to produce the message or posting upon request. The essence of citation is verification of information. If a reader cannot retrieve the source, s/he cannot see the full context or confirm the accuracy of presentation.

DATES:

• The date provided on a web resource may not be the original date of publication for a resource. It may be when it was added to the web. Subscription indexes, however, use the date the article was published.

In Microsoft Word 2007, follow these instructions to use hanging indents properly (perform this action before or after creating your citations):

• Click on the Page Layout tab
• Click on the menu expander arrow on the Paragraph bar (in red below)

• Click on the Indents and Spacing tab (default).
• Under the Indentation section look for the Special field.
  • In the dropdown box click on Hanging.
  • Adjust the amount in the By field (0.5" is default).

Murphy Library gratefully acknowledges UW-Stout and Carol Hagness for the template and some of the content for this guide.