Alert:
All Learning Commons & Library spaces are closed Friday, May 10, 2023 for staff development.
The second floor of McCormick Library is closed beginning May 10th for elevator modernization and repairs. For details, see our Alerts page.
All Learning Commons & Library spaces are closed Friday, May 10, 2023 for staff development.
The second floor of McCormick Library is closed beginning May 10th for elevator modernization and repairs. For details, see our Alerts page.
If you were telling someone that they absolutely had to read this awesome article you found: what kind of information would you give them? But you also sometimes need to know more in order to help someone find it. You might share what page you found something on, when it was posted, or even give a link to the article.
With all the possibilities, it's best to have a set of directions on what information to include and in what order. These rules help people who know how to "read" a citation to know what they are looking at without you having to say "The author is ____. The title is _____."
So how do you know what to do? You follow the directions.
All you need to do is identify the core elements and the information about the container, then put them in order and apply all the correct formatting and make sure you type it all up correctly.
Most of the databases have a citation feature, even though it looks different in every one of them. These are often fairly accurate, but they do occasionally have errors! You will want to check them against something that you know is right while giving attention to the details such as periods, capitalizations, and italics.
Most places you are writing your paper have something built into them for creating and managing citations. If not, there are also several apps, add-ons, and websites that create them for you. What works best for you will depend on your needs. The same double-check rule applies to these as the databases, since ultimately they are all doing the same thing!
