Forest, Trees, and In Text Citations

Citations, Simplified

Deep in the forest of your research paper, the tangle of trees may be overwhelming.

How do I properly cite this quotation? Do I put the author first? Do I put the title in quotes or italics? Do I cite after the quote or do I just use the reference section? Should I use MLA or APA? Or Turabian...what is Turabian? Does the period go before or after the parentheses?

Lost in the woods, the answer to all of these questions may seem completely arbitrary. But don't despair. There is an order to things and you just need to step back to see the forest for the trees. The forest, in this case, is a style guide.

What is a style guide?

A style guide provides clear rules for citations, language usage, punctuation, grammar and formatting for books, articles, and research papers. You have probably heard of the two most popular style guides:  MLA style (Modern Language Association) and APA style (American Psychological Association).  But there are many more, including Turabian style (a simplified version of Chicago Style),  AMA style (American Medical Association), and CBE style (Council of Biology Editors).

Look closely and you will see that each style guide looks very similar but is in fact different. In a perfect world, we could all unify behind one style to simplify the process. Alas, the world is not perfect. So...

Two Simple Steps

First, identify what style guide to use for your research paper. Your professor will usually specify in the course syllabus or assignment directions. If your professor does not specify, then any of the major styles should be fine. Different styles are roughly associated with different disciplines: APA (social sciences and education), MLA (arts and humanities), Turabian (history and political science), and CBE/AMA (physical sciences).

Second, follow the style rules listed in that particular style guide: APA, MLA, Turabian, CBE, or AMA. It can be confusing and slow-going at first, but following the style guides will get easier as you go. To make the process especially easy, you may use the References tab of Microsoft Word to automate most of the process, as illustrated in this video.


In Text Parenthetical Citation with Reference Section

To add another layer of confusion, most style guides allow for two different citation formats: parenthetical citations or end notes citations. Books and journal articles often use end note citations, but most often students writing research papers will use parenthetical citations.

For parenthetical citations, you provide an short citation within the text, following a direct quote or paraphrase. For example, "We must rethink higher education," the authors state (Keeling and Hersh 2011, 151). This particular parenthetical citation is in Turabian style. 

For end note citations, a quote or paraphrase is followed by a number or symbol in superscript (such as the *) that then corresponds with end notes listed later in the work.

In either case, you must also include a reference section, also called a bibliography, at the end of your work with the complete citation for any book, article, website, et cetera cited in your research paper. Here is the reference section citation that follows the in text parenthetical citation, again in Turabian.

Keeling, Richard, and Richard Hersh. "We're Losing Our Minds: Rethinking Higher Education." New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2011.