APA, MLA & Turabian Citation Guides

At TCC, three citation styles are commonly used. Your instructor will probably specify a preference.

The TCC Library has available handouts for APA, MLA and Turabian formats, composed of examples using actual library resources available to students. Each of the guides contain several sections.

• The first  section shows examples of brief citations for quotes and paraphrasing within the text of the written paper.
• The second  section gives examples of full citations to be listed at the end of the paper.
• The third  section contains a sample list, called a Bibliography, or Works Cited page.

Research is the process of finding and organizing information synthesized from a variety of resources; information extracted from traditional books and magazines, from movies, TV and radio, newspapers, computer web sites and of course from people. Information found from only one source may be biased, misleading or incomplete. To insure accuracy of your findings, many instructors will suggest you use a variety of both sources and formats.
As you are writing your paper, document the facts and quotes you obtained in your research process. Direct quotes, or copying word-for-word , is acceptable provided you

• first put the quoted words within quotation marks, i.e. "quoted words"
• and second, provide a brief in-text citation.

This alerts the reader those were not your thoughts or words and indicates the origin of the quote.
An occasional direct quote is useful; using a 'string of pearls', or too many direct quotes to fill up space, is to be avoided by paraphrasing, re-writing the ideas and thoughts into your own words. Instructors prefer paraphrasing, as it demonstrates your understanding of the ideas and concepts and ability to restate them. Even when paraphrasing, citations are still included to indicate the original source of the ideas presented.
In an academic research paper, you, the writer, are to identify the sources of your information in such a way that the reader (instructor) can retrace your research footsteps and locate those same sources. The necessary information is a citation, and will allow the reader to locate a copy of the same resource, magazine article, edition of a book, or website, etc. The citations must be constructed with consistency, to easily provide the reader all the necessary identification information.
The Research Paper Guide , prepared by the TCC Writing Center  Staff, available both at the Writing Center and at the Library, provides more detailed information on how to write an academic paper. Links for all three are above. Writing Center staff will "discuss with you the focus, organization, and development of your paper; we also can help you improve your sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation". Check their site for Writing Center Workshops.
TCC Library has 100+ handouts available to assist students in their research .
Among the most popular are:'popular magazines vs professional journals' , topic suggestions and Avoiding Plagiarism 

Copies of the following publications are available in the TCC Library

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers ,
7th edition, 2009, MLA, New York
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
6th edition, 2010, (2nd printing) APA, Washington, D. C.
Chicago Manual of Style.
16th edition, 2010, University of Chicago Press.
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations ,
Kate L. Turabian, 7th edition, 2007, University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Electronic Style: a Guide to Citing Electronic Information
Xia Li and Nancy Crane, 1993, Meckler, Westport, CT

Many web sites provide student research assistance. The following recommended web sites were selected as useful sources of citation examples and style guides for college students.

Zotero:  is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Demo video. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

NoodleTools: MLA / APA Bibliography Composer -  a subscription program with some free research tools. Try NoodleBib Express for help with citations for print and online sources

Aplus Research & Writing for HS and College Students Home Page
Internet Public Library's comprehensive and popular site. The IPL is an educational initiative of the University of Michigan School of Information

Online! a Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources
by Andrew Harnack and Eugene Kleppinger, 2010, Bedford/ St. Martins Publishers
A superb web site, providing detailed examples of APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and other formats. Also at this site are recommended links to research by academic topic areas. This is one of the best !

Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
Professor Michael Harvey, Washington College Chestertown, MD
The Nuts and Bolts Guide is one of the web's most popular college writing how-to sites, winning recognition from Yahoo! and other content-meisters.

Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association
2010 American Psychological Association, The official web site of the APA.

Modern Language Association Online: MLA style
FAQ's  MLA's official web site, with examples

Chicago Manual of Style,
Univ of Chicago

Citation Guides for Electronic Documents
2005, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, includes a variety of documentation formats.

Writing Research Papers
2009 Purdue University Online Writing Lab
APA guide & MLA guide

Citing Electronic Information in History Papers
Through interpretation of "electronic gaps" in Turabian / CMS by Maurice Crouse Department of History, The University of Memphis. Numerous examples for internet and database sources, 2009

Style Manuals and Citation Guides
Duke University, 2008

Citing the World Wide Web in Style
APA and MLA Formats, Troy State University, 2008, Troy State University Florida Region Central Library

Guide for Writing Research Papers
Capitol Community College, Hartford, CT 2007

Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr.
A classic writing guide for college students, bartleby.com has the full-text Strunk on-line.

Online Directory for Writing
Online Directory for Composition
Top20Online.com Education's links for dozens of research assistance sites.

Updated & Revised August 2011