Citation Style Guide

Congratulations! You did your research, you found high-level sources, and now you’re ready to ready show your work and turn in your paper. Recording the sources you used, and where to find them, is called citing your work. The records you create are called citations. 

But which citation style to use? Citation styles come in many flavors, but for most scholarly work, only one format is correct. It’s all about the type of work you’re doing – what field or discipline you’re writing about. This Research Guide will help you get familiar with citation styles, and help you find the right one for your discipline.

Citation is important for several reasons:

1. If you don’t direct readers to specifically where you got your information, they (and your teachers!) will assume that you did that work yourself. So you must give the original researcher credit in a clear, direct way. Failing to do so can result in accusations of plagiarism, which violates rules stated in Jefferson’s student handbook, as well as universal academic standards. Plagiarism is dealt with very seriously.
2. You’re showing the strength of your argument by revealing its foundation in sound, authoritative evidence.
3. You are protecting the integrity of your work by showing when and where it was sourced.

Different fields developed different standards for how citations look – science citations are formatted differently from those in literature, for instance, and both are different from citations in social science, like psychology. The differences may seem minor, but they carry great importance for researchers (and teachers!) who share their work in this field. Because you are now a member of this group of scholars, let’s do it right.