Welcome to the Greensboro College Citation Guide!
We made this guide to help you with all things APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turabian. The Overview page has general information about citing sources and the tabs at the top take you to more specific sections of the guide. Please contact me if you have any questions!
Using citations is definitely overwhelming and hard to understand. Even though I'm a librarian and I have lots of practice, I don't write out my citations by hand! (Personally, I use Zotero software to save and create citations for me.) Please take advantage of citation building websites, but be sure to check your citations using the resources on this guide!
How exactly do we incorporate a source into our assignment?
All three of these require you to cite the original author! Even when you're putting something into your own words, if you read it somewhere else, you need to cite it!
Finding sources to use and writing about them is hard enough! Why do we have to cite those sources and create bibliographies?
Even though it can be challenging, using citations properly is an important part of the research process. It may seem intimidating at first but it isn't too difficult once you get the hang of it. These are some reasons we use citations when we do research:
First of all, ask your instructor. While these citation styles all have rules and guidelines, make sure you know what your instructor expects of your assignment. They may want you to follow a specific style, choose your own, or use one with some slight modifications.
The main purpose of citing your sources is so others can find them. While there are a bunch of rules that may seem arbitrary, they're designed to help anyone find a source.