Created for AH110 at Defiance College.

1. Citation 101
Brought to you by
Pilgrim Library &
Learning Commons

2. What is citation?
When you start writing in college, you will be expected
to support your statements with credible sources. This
means conducting research and finding reliable and
accurate sources of information.
Citation is giving credit to those sources.

3. What is citation?
Ultimately, when you create a citation, you are giving your
readers (professors) all the information they’d need to go
look up your source for themselves.
You will cite your sources in two main ways:
1. List the complete citation information at the end of the
paper in the Works Cited/Bibliography/Reference page
2. Put a brief reference to your source within your text
whenever you pull information or quotes from that source
(In-text Citation)

4. What are citation styles?
Citation styles are just different ways of
formatting your papers and the information
about your source.
There are several different citation styles.
MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian are the most
common citation styles. You will probably have to
use each of these at some point during your college
career.

5. Why are there different styles?
Citation styles are created by
organizations that each tend to cater to an
academic discipline.
MLA -- Modern Language Association
(Humanities – English, Literature, Composition & more)
APA -- American Psychological Association
(Social Sciences – Psychology/Sociology, Business, Education & more)

6. How different are the styles?
Most of the citation styles piece together the same bits
of information in different ways. Here are some
common ways that citation styles differ:
• Order of citation information
• Capitalization
• Punctuation
• Required Information

7. So how do I go about
making a citation?
Five
Simple Steps

8. Step 1: Grab your Cookbook
Be sure to have a copy of your
citation manual with you.
Or bring up an online one like the Library’s
Citation Guides or Purdue’s OWL. Just make
sure it’s a trustworthy site!

9. Step 2: Figure out which
recipe to use
Determine what type of
source you have.
(book? Ebook? website? online newspaper
article?)

10. Step 3: Create an ingredient list
Locate a sample citation entry
for your type of source.
Then determine what pieces of
information you will need to find from
your source in order to cite it
(author, title, publisher, etc)

11. Step 4: Gather your ingredients
Gather the information you
need from your source.

12. Step 5: Start Cooking
Following the order of the sample
citation entry, arrange the information
you gathered into a properly formatted
citation.
Also remember to practice creating an
in-text citation for this source.

13. Easy as pie,
right?
Now it’s your turn!