To avoid plagiarism, you must learn how to cite sources properly, especially in academic writing. Do not worry; we are here to assist you in familiarizing yourself with the APA, MLA, and Chicago referencing styles.
Knowing about these famous citation styles is necessary to cite source materials effectively. In this blog, we will discuss every approach to simplify your citing process with the help of practical examples.
Three famous citation styles help to adjust the writing depending on an academic or professional field – APA, MLA, and Chicago.
All styles have specific conventions regarding formatting citations, including author citation, title citing, and page number. Understanding and using these citation styles is essential as they help maintain academic ethics and make it easy for a scholar reading your work to identify the proof for your claims.
A citation is a way to let your reader know that any specific content in the write-up comes from another source. A citation helps your readers navigate the details required to rediscover that source by providing the following information:
The general format for APA citations follows the author-date style, providing brief information within the text to direct readers to the corresponding entry in the references list.
In APA, in-text citations have the author-date format that includes their last name and year of publication separated by a comma. In addition, if a direct quote or providing specific information is made and it involves mention of page number in cases materials are printed or time stamp in case they were viewed online, then one writes the abbreviation p. for single page numerals during pp. Refers to more than two consecutive pages. Paras stands for more than two successive paragraphs within an article.
When quoting from books with several volumes for paragraphs. There is no need to include a location when general information, such as an idea, repeatedly appears in literature.
APA citation of an article contains the author’s last name and the initial letter of the first name, full date from publication – month with a day if given – title, or article link. APA does not use abbreviations for names of months.
In MLA (Modern Language Association) style, in-text citations provide brief information within the text to direct readers to the corresponding entry on the works cited page.
In the case of MLA, in-text citations are just an author’s last name and page number or timestamp without any abbreviations or commas.
In MLA, to reference a website, include the page or article title in quotation marks and the site’s name in italics. Also, write “accessed” followed by the day, month, or year you visited the source you cite in MLA format.
In Chicago style, there are two central systems for citing sources within the text: the author-date system and the notes and bibliography system.
Parenthetical citations or footnotes will be an option in Chicago citations. Parenthetical citations in Chicago are similar to APA citing style and works using the – author-date approach.
The comma is lacking between author and year, although there is a gap before location information after publishers’ names. Page number abbreviations are not used in Chicago citations.
The in-text citation of an article in Chicago is very similar to that used within MLA, whereby the type of information and abbreviations are concerned. You should carefully note how the citations are made for total order and punctuation only to observe that with Chicago citations without commas.
To do accurate and correct references, it is important to know when to use APA, MLA, Chicago reference styles. Each style is tailored to specific academic disciplines and writing purposes:
Works best for social science, psychology, education and business applications. This is a very good point because, for scientific writing, it emphasizes clarity as well as a consistent format for in-text citations and references.
Example Use Case: A research on how social media affect in the mental health
Used in humanities, such as literature, arts, and in cultural studies. Regarding the simplicity and readability, MLA is best for analyzing texts and creatives texts.
Example Use Case: Symbolism in The Great Gatsby, analyzed literary point of view.
History, anthropology, publishing, law. Chicago offers flexibility with two systems: humanities Notes and Bibliography system and the sciences and social sciences Author-Date system.
Example Use Case: The application of World War II using primary sources.
If you’re aware of the expectations in your field, you’re automatically on the path to balance credibility and professionalism, ensuring your academic or professional writing is seen that way in the first place.
It is possible that the most experienced writers and students can also make mistakes formatting citations. Avoid these common pitfalls to ensure your citations are polished and error-free:
Use these pitfalls to make your citations more accurate and professional! Citation generators such as EduWriter or official style manuals will help you for more guidance.
| Aspect | APA (7th Edition) | MLA (9th Edition) | Chicago (17th Edition) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Use | Social sciences, psychology, education, business | Humanities, literature, cultural studies | History, publishing, some humanities |
| In-Text Citations | Author-date format (e.g., Smith, 2023) | Author-page format (e.g., Smith 23) | Superscript numbers referencing footnotes/endnotes (e.g., ¹) |
| Reference List/Bibliography | Called “References”; listed alphabetically | Called “Works Cited”; listed alphabetically | Called “Bibliography”; alphabetized, or by chapter for books |
| Books Format | Last Name, F. (Year). Title. Publisher. | Last Name, First Name. Title. Publisher, Year. | Last Name, First Name. Title. Place of publication: Publisher. |
| Journal Articles | Last Name, F. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), page numbers. | Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Journal Name, vol. number, no. number, year, pp. page numbers. | Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Journal Name volume, no. issue (year): page numbers. |
| Websites | Last Name, F. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage. Site Name. URL | Last Name, First Name. “Title of Webpage.” Website Name, Date Published, URL. | Last Name, First Name. “Title of Webpage.” Website Name. URL. |
| Footnotes/Endnotes | Not typically used, except for specific information | Rarely used except for notes or citations | Commonly used to provide detailed citations and supplementary information |
| Punctuation and Capitalization | Titles of works are italicized; only the first word of a title is capitalized, except proper nouns | Titles of works are italicized; capitalizes all principal words in titles | Titles of works are italicized; uses title case for works (capitalizing major words) |
| Unique Features | Emphasizes the date of publication in citations to highlight recent sources | Focuses on the authorship and page numbers for humanities work | Offers two citation systems: Notes and Bibliography (for humanities) and Author-Date (for social sciences) |
EduWriter and other AI tools for creating citations are a revolution that makes the creation of citations faster, more accurate and easier. The inputs are transformed by these tools by using advanced algorithms to produce the citations in different styles, like APA, MLA and Chicago. These tools are certainly useful, but you need to know the accuracy and limitations of these tools.
With increasing implementation of AI, there is always a possibility that in the future, academic citation will look much cleaner, but at the same time human supervision will remain a part of the highest standard academic writing.
If you are citing a podcast in APA format, you will want to include the host’s name, the date of the podcast, the title of the episode in sentence case, the podcast series title in italics, and the URL.
Example: Smith, J. (Host). (2023, October 5). Understanding climate change [Audio podcast episode]. In The Science Hour.
It is yes, that URLs usually appear in MLA citations for online sources. However, MLA allows you to omit the “https: For simplicity, we use” or “http://” from the beginning of the URL. But always make sure the link is active and can go directly to the source.
Example: Doe, John. “The Evolution of Space Travel.” Science Weekly, vol. 22, no. 4, 2023, pp. 45-60. https://example.com/space-travel
For humanities the Chicago style suggests using footnotes and for longer documents using endnotes.
While APA is mainly used for social science work, otherwise common for literature papers can also be used. Nevertheless, MLA is the style often used for humanities, specifically literature. For exact details, check with your instructor.
Chicago Notes and Bibliography has two different ways for citing a book depending upon whether you’re making a footnotes entry or a bibliography entry.
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This AI-based tool saves you the burden of manually citing sources and lets your work shine without interrupting its flow, all thanks to the perfectly referenced text. Select EduWriter APA Format Generator to create citation pages that are correctly cited. Proper citation ensures that the quoted facts can be easily tracked back to their author.
Note: EduWriter also features an Online Paraphraser Tool that uses the power of AI to quickly and effectively paraphrase provided text to remove plagiarism and bypass AI detectors.
EduWriter’s APA and MLA citation generator, hosted on the eduwriter.ai website, uses modern algorithms to create precise and accurate references based on free documents uploaded by researchers.
With EduWriter’s superior technology, your citations match the unique guidelines of APA, MLA, and Chicago referencing so that punctuation and formatting properly comply with sequencing.
You save time and effort through such an automated system and have minimal chances of making errors because you are sure that the citation tools will always produce zero unoriginal content papers for all your academic or research documents.