Access Purdue Online Writing Lab’s citation guides from their website.
- Select the Online Writing Lab
- From the menu on the left, select “Research and Citation”
- This opens a drop-down menu with commonly used citation styles (APA 6th and 7th Editions, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, AMA, and ASA)
The three most common citation styles are MLA, APA, and Chicago. Select the style you’re using from the drop-down menu, then click the “Formatting and Style Guide” tab. All three include:
- “General Format” tab, showing how to format a title page/header, and sections/headings where applicable. Note: APA has a separate headings tab.
- Tabs for Books, Periodicals, and Electronic/Web Sources, which include:
- Books—author-specific issues, ex. a text has no known author or multiple authors, citing multiple texts by the same author, etc.
- Periodicals— citing newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals
- Electronic/Web Sources—citing websites, e-books, emails, social media, etc.
- Sample Papers with notes on formatting, especially helpful for visual learners
MLA and APA use in-text citations and have separate tabs for these from the Works Cited tabs (MLA) and Reference List tabs (APA). Chicago uses endnotes or footnotes and includes these rules with the bibliographic entry rules in each source tab listed above.
Where to find how to cite…
Speeches, lectures, presentations
- MLA—Other Common Sources
- APA—Other Non-Print Sources
- Chicago—Miscellaneous Sources
Television, movies, music
- MLA—Other Common Sources
- APA—Audiovisual Media
- Chicago—Audiovisual Recordings and Other Multimedia
Artwork
- MLA—Other Common Sources
- APA—Audiovisual Media
- Chicago—Miscellaneous Sources
Improve your writing and study skills! Book an appointment with a writing advisor and/or academic coach on OSCARplus. Questions? Email skills@mcmaster.ca.
References
Purdue Online Writing Lab. Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html.