Citing Sources

If your sources are relatively standard types, you can try using an automated bibliography formatting website, in which you enter the information for each of your sources and the website formats citations for you. If you want to try using one of these sites, we recommend:

• EasyBib
• BibMe
• Citation Machine
• Noodle Bib Express

Although these automated formatting sites can help you create basic citations, the citations they create are not always completely accurate and we strongly recommend that you check that your citations are correct based on verified format examples.

The Works Cited list appears at the end of the paper on a separate page (or pages, if necessary). Check out the Purdue OWL basic rules for Works Cited and example Works Cited list for more information.

Some basic rules include:

• Put the title, Works Cited, at the beginning of the list.
• This list includes all of your cited sources, listed in alphabetical order according to the last name of the author. In all cases, the citation begins with the author's name (last name first) whenever the author's name is listed.
• If no author is listed, alphabetize by the first word in the title (ignoring "A", "An" or "The" at the beginning of a title).
• Only the first author's name should be listed last name first. A second and/or third author's name is written normally.
• For a work with 3 or more authors, list only the first author's name followed by a comma and the words et al.
• Skip a line between each citation.
• The first line of each citation is not indented, but each line of each citation after the first line is indented (the opposite of a typical paragraph).
• Book, magazine, journal and newspaper titles are always italicized. Article titles are always put in "quotations."

Works Cited and References

The most common way to cite sources is to use a Works Cited or References list at the end of your research paper.

Works Cited is the title of your list of citations when using the MLA (Modern Language Association) format. References is used when citing sources using APA (American Psychological Association) style.

Both a Works Cited and a References list includes a citation for each of the sources you used to write your paper. Many instructors specify which citation format they prefer; some leave it open as long as students maintain one consistent format. In your Works Cited or References you only list items you have actually cited in your paper.

Bibliography

A Bibliography is not the same as a Works Cited or References list. In a Bibliography you list all of the material you may have consulted in preparing your essay, whether or not you have actually cited the work. A Bibliography may include any sources related to the topic of the research paper.

The list of all citations in a Bibliography is commonly organized in a single alphabetical list. Each different type of source (i.e. book, webpage, news article) has a precise format that is specified by the given format such as MLA or APA.