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Writing Style Guides By Topic

Expand the topics below for detailed information about the correct style and grammar application for your written work. You will also find links to trusted sources for writing style, punctuation, examples and more.

In-text citations are parenthetical citations that direct readers to the appropriate entry in your reference list. They follow two different types of attribution: direct quotes and paraphrases. Both types require a citation including the author(s)' last name and the date of publication; however, the form varies depending on how much information you include in the text of your paper. If you mention the author's name, you do not need to include it in the citation. Likewise, if you are paraphrasing, you do not need to include page numbers. Page numbers should only be included after a direct quote.

Paraphrase with author named in text:

According to Smith and Stuart (1998), laughter is good for your health.

Paraphrase with author named in parenthetical citation:

Laughter was found to decrease the chance of developing heart disease by nearly 70% (Smith & Stuart, 1998).

Direct quote with author named in text:

Hendriks (2002) defines body image as "a person's mental perception of the shape, size and appearance of his or her body" (p. 107).

Direct quote with author named in parenthetical citation:

"Body image is defined as a person's mental perception of the shape, size and appearance of his or her body" (Hendriks, 2002, p.107).

APA Quick Reference

The reference list is an alphabetical list of the works cited in your paper. It includes all the information readers need to locate your source. It should be on a separate sheet attached to the end of your paper and titled "References." Entries should be double-spaced and use a hanging indent. They should not be numbered.

Each entry in the reference list should contain the author(s)' last name and first initial, as well as the year the work was published and the title. The exact ordering of this information differs according to the medium in which the work was published.

APA style has different rules for title capitalization and italics than other forms of documentation. In general, only the first word of a book or article's title is capitalized. Proper nouns are always capitalized. Also, if the title contains a colon or dash, the word immediately following it is capitalized. You should always italicize book and journal titles. Article titles are neither italicized nor in quotes.

Book with one author

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can

matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam.

Book with two or more authors

Halpern, J.W., KIlborn, J.M., & Lokke, A.M. (1988).

Business writing strategies and samples. New

York: Macmillian Publishing Company.

Selection in an edited anthology or book

Frye, R.M. (1992). Language for God and the theology

of metaphor. In A.F. Kimmel (Ed.), Speaking the

Christian God: The holy trinity and the challenge

of feminism (pp. 17-43). Grand Rapids, MI:

William B. Eardmans Publishing Company.

Article in a journal paginated by volume

Barker, D. & Barker, L. (1992) Criteria for evaluating

models of interpersonal communication processes.

Communication Yearbook, 15, 633-643.

Article in a journal paginated by issue

Prabu, D. & Johnson, M. (1998). The role of self in

third-person effects about body image. Journal

of Communication, 48, (3), 37-58.

Article in a magazine

Wolffe, R. (2004, October 25). Kerry by the Book.

Newsweek, 144, 38-41.

Article in a newspaper

Cole, M. (2004, October 27). Wu, Ameri draw others

into their fight. The Oregonian, p. A1.

Document in a web site

American Psychological Association. (2000, January).

Successful aging: The second 50. APA Monitor.

Retrieved October 2, 1999, from

http://www.apa.org/monitor/cs.html

APA Quick Reference

Occasionally, your may want to use information that is cited in one of your sources. In this situation, the best option is to locate the source of that information and cite it directly. However, if you cannot locate the original work, you may cite it as a secondary source.

To cite a secondary source, enter the source that YOU READ in your reference list. In the body of your paper, give the name(s) and date of the original author(s) and parenthetically cite the source you read.

Example

Smith and Stuart (1975, cited in Hendriks, 2000) suggested that laughter is good for your health.

APA Quick Reference

Like any other citation style, CM requires that you provide full bibliographic information for all ideas that you cite. In CM, this information is given in the footnotes at the bottom of the page where the citation occurs. Each entry will be numbered to correspond with the citation in the text (your word processing program will do this for you). Examples are given for the following selections:

First reference to a book by one author
Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 25-30.

Second reference to a book by one author
Eudora Welty, 32.

Book by two or three authors
Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker, Woman's Worth (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 15.

Book by more than three authors
Mark H. Moore et al., Dangerous Offenders: The Elusive Target of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 45.

Article from weekly or biweekly magazine or newspaper
Karl Taro Greenfield, 'Giving Away the E-Store,' Time, 22 November 1999, 58-60.

Article from a monthly or bimonthly periodical
John Tyler Bonner, 'The Evolution of Evolution,' Natural History, April 1999, 20-21.

Article in a journal with continuous pagination
Phyllis Tyson, 'The Psychology of Women,' Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 46 (1997): 361-64.

Article in a journal that pages each issue separately
Thomas F. Hogarty, 'Gasoline: Still Powering Cars in 1050?' The Futurist 33, no. 3 (1999): 51-55.

Secondary source
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), 90, quoted in Caroline Shrodes, Harry Finestone, and Michael Shugrue, The Conscious Reader, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1988), 282.

CM Quick Reference

Citing the exact words of your sources is vital to writing a research paper. Quotations provide credibility and bolster your thesis when used correctly, but misused quotes can easily damage the flow of your writing and your argument. Watch out for these common mistakes:

Too many quotes

If more than one-quarter of your paper is comprised of quotations, you may not be sufficiently synthesizing the material but instead pasting the ideas of your sources together. When you rewrite, spend more time summarizing or paraphrasing and building the information into your own thesis.

Using long quotations when unnecessary

Sometimes quoting a long passage is needed to present a detailed argument completely. But long quotations that contain irrelevant material or ideas that could have been summarized break up the flow of your paper. Even worse, they demonstrate that you either didn't understand the material, were too lazy to summarize, or are trying to stretch the word count. Be selective with your quotations and summarize or use ellipses to cut out fluff.

Injecting a quotation

A quote is "injected" into your writing if you do not integrate the idea into your own topic through a signal phrase or further explanation. For example:

After seeing the ghost of his father, Hamlet goes crazy. "As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/ To put an antic disposition on" (Shakespeare, 1.5.167-168). In the next scene, Ophelia tells her father of the strange way Hamlet approached her.

The quote relates to the argument of the writer, but the writer has not explained how the quote is important, how it supports her argument, or what it means. Not only does the section sound awkward, but it shows that the writer has not fully thought through the connection.

The writer can fix this section by using a signal phrase (in bold), which introduces the quote and its significance:

After seeing the ghost of his father, Hamlet states his intention to act mad by telling the men, "I perchance hereafter shall think meet/ To put an antic disposition on" (Shakespeare, 1.5.167-168). In the next scene Ophelia describes the strange mannerisms Hamlet has now adopted.

She can also integrate the quote into her sentence, as if it were her own words:

After seeing the ghost of his father, Hamlet decides "to put an antic disposition on" (Shakespeare, 1.5.168) so others would think he has gone mad.

Other things to keep in mind when using quotations:

  • Always cite your sources using the proper style.
  • Paraphrasing is to restate an idea in your own words while retaining the precise meaning and emphasis. Use synonyms and your own sentence structure, but do not distort the meaning of the original text.
  • Summarizing is to condense a passage in your own words so that you identify the main points but present the idea more concisely.
  • Vary your verb usage in signal phrases. For example, do not repeatedly write "Smith says...." or "Smith writes..." Be more precise; is the author explaining, arguing, asserting, maintaining?

MLA Quick Reference

Other MLA Sites

Although it is possible to include a long quotation in your paper, preferably you should only cite the "meat" of the quotation. To do this, cite the words you need and use ellipsis points (...) to cut out the unneeded material in the middle of your quote, weaving your own words around the quote to explain it.

Example

Othello is characterized by '...first, a sense of violent energies and passions... and secondly, a single-mindedness of intention and desire. (Everett 155).

If the syntax of the quote does not exactly match the syntax or meaning of your sentence, you may use brackets ( [ ] ) to add letters or words to the quotation to match the syntax or meaning.

Occasionally, printed material will contain an obvious typo. To quote the material accurately, you must not correct the spelling or information because the typo is what your source printed. Instead, add sic (Latin for so or thus) after the typo to indicate to your audience that the mistake was the author's, not your own.

Example

...In 1592 (sic) Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the first time... (Ireland 15).

MLA Quick Reference

Other MLA Sites

After any information which you are required to cite, insert footnotes using your word processing options. The numbers for the footnotes always appear after the punctuation mark (except dashes). When possible, insert them after a complete sentence. Footnotes must be ordered sequentially.

Unlike MLA, which provides full bibliographic information at the end of the paper, your bibliographic information should be written in the footnote; typically, bibliographies are only included to indicate additional sources.

For the first mention of an author's work, provide the full bibliographic information. However, after the second mention of an author's work, shorten your information to the author's name and a page reference. If you are citing more than one work by the same author, also include a shortened version of the title.

CM Quick Reference

An MLA in-text citation does not include the date because currency of ideas in certain fields typically is not necessary in order to be valid. Instead, MLA fields focus on the text, making page numbers extremely important. Therefore, an in-text citation includes both the author and page number, regardless of whether it is a direct quote, a summary, or a paraphrase.

There are two ways to cite the author and page number:

Author named in sentence
According to Jonathon Dollimore, "King Lear is, above all, a play about power, property and inheritance" (540).

Author named in parenthetical citation
In Act IV, we see that "King Lear is, above all, a play about power, property and inheritance" (Dollimore 540).

Note that there is no ending punctuation (i.e., a period) before the closing quotation mark. The period appears after the parentheses. Make an exception with quoted sentences that end with an exclamation point or question mark. In these cases, include the punctuation within the closing quotation mark and place a period after the parentheses.

Here are several other common in-text citation situations:

Two or more works by the same author
If you cite two or more works by the same author, you must identify which work you are citing, either in your sentence or in an abbreviated form in parentheses.

Two or more authors of the same work
For two or three authors, name them all either in your text or in parentheses following the same format as for a single author. If there are more than three authors, either list them all or name the first author's last name followed by the phrase "et al."

Organization as author
When material is published by a group, such as a government agency, commission, or corporation, treat the organization as the author. State the name in your text or, if the name is long, use an abbreviated version in parentheses.

Unknown author
When no author is given you can cite a work by its title, using either the full title in a signal phrase or an abbreviated version in the parentheses.

Entire work
You may need to acknowledge an entire work, such as a film concert, or book, in order to briefly present the gist of the work. In this instance, it is better to name the author, director, or composer and the title in your text.

Work with numbered paragraphs or screens instead of pages
Give the paragraph or screen number after the author's name and a comma. To distinguish them from page numbers, use the abbreviation "par" or the word "screen".

Multivolume work
You only need to include the volume number when citing more than one volume of a multivolume work (your works cited entry will make it clear otherwise). To do this, include in the parentheses the volume number followed by a colon, a space, and the page number.</>

MLA Quick Reference

Other MLA Sites

Any quote longer than four typed lines must be presented in block format. Do not use quotation marks; instead, indent the entire quote one inch from the left margin to form a "block" of text. Double-space the quote, just like the text of the paper, and place the period at the end of the quote, not after the parentheses.

Example

Lynda Boose identifies a conflict within this feminist examination:

With a certain irony, it can be said that psychoanalytic theory - which assumes the transhistorical nature of the family unit - had seemed to feminist explorers so strikingly appropriate a compass for remapping Shakespearean drama precisely because the Shakespearean family seemed to resemble our own modern one so closely. Even the Christian marriage ceremony has changed but negligibly from the ritual alluded to in Shakespeare's plays. (614)

Long quotations should be used rarely, however, because frequent use tends to break up your text and make the reader impatient. Also, be especially careful to integrate the quote into your paper. Introduce it, and comment afterwards on why it was important. (See Building Quotes Into Your Writing for more information.)

MLA Quick Reference

Other MLA Sites

Compile the full bibliographic information for all cited ideas at the end of your paper. This is a separate page with the words "Works Cited" centered at the top and the bibliographic entries listed alphabetically. The first line of each entry is justified to the left margin and any remaining lines are indented. All entries are double-spaced.

Book by One Author

Romaine, Suzanne. Communicating Gender. Mahwah,

NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.

Book by Two or More Authors

Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The

Autobiography. New York: Simon, 1989.

Book with an Author and an Editor

Xa, Henry. Tips for Successful Writing. Ed. Tom P.

Lincoln. New York: Schulster & Rolings, 1943.

An Edition of a Book

Smith, Katharine V. The Art of Being a Writing Assistant.

5th ed. San Francisco: U of Chicago P, 1992.

Selection from an Anthology or Edited Collection

Goldsby, Jackie. "Teamwork." When Tutor Meets

Student. 2nd ed. Ed. Martha Maxwell. Ann Arbor,

MI: U of Michigan P, 1994. 39-44.

Article from a Journal that Pages Each Issue Separately

(In this example "54" is the volume, "10" is the issue number)

Ireland, Theresa. "Classroom Management for the Social

Studies Classroom." The Record. 54.10 (2002): 20-25.


MLA Quick Reference

Other MLA Sites

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