Basic Academic Citation Styles
To begin with, meeting requirements of this or that citation style appear to be essential on the road to great academic results. Indeed, reference style turns out to be a set of generally accepted academic standards of citing the references used in academic paper you write.
Commonly, there exist a lot of citation styles, but we would like to draw your attention to 5 basic ones that you should be familiar with, if you are eager to become a real expert in academic writing domain:
• APA
• MLA
• Harvard
• Chicago
• Turabian
APA Style
Let’s start with an overview of APA (American Psychological Association) Style. Indeed, this style is widely used when completing papers in social sciences. According to it your paper should incorporate the cover page, the introduction, the main part, the conclusion and the bibliography list.
Moreover, it suggests you should type your paper in Times New Roman font, 12 pt. using double space and standard-size settings. And don’t forget about a page header that should be added to each page.
Click here to get more detailed info on APA citation style.
MLA Format
As for MLA format is concerned, it has mainly the same general requirements as APA style, though differs slightly from it. According to it:
• You shouldn’t write a cover page.
• You ought to divide your paper in sections and number them.
• If there are any additional notes you want to incorporate in your paper, place them before your reference list.
• All the titles should be initialized.
Feel free to download this manual to learn more about MLA reference style
Harvard Format
Probably the main peculiarity of this citation style is that it offers you 2 ways of referencing: you can do it just in the text or in a bibliography list. Besides, according to it, you should organize your paper I the following way:
• The introductory part
• The essential part with in-text citations or a separate reference list
• Summary
To get more info about Harvard format, feel comfortable to download this printable guide.
Chicago Referencing Style
What sets Chicago citation format apart from other styles is a possibility of using 2 documentation systems: author-date system; bibliography and notes system. The first one is a perfect fit for writing papers in social, natural, and physical sciences, while the latter one is used in handling academic tasks in the humanities.
Furthermore, Chicago referencing style requires that all references should be numbered and arranged alphabetically with mentioning their author/authors and public house, page from which citation was taken and other vital info.
You can find more detailed info on Chicago Reference Style here.
Turabian Style
In fact, Turabian style appears to have quite similar citation standards and systems to those of Chicago format. Again 2 systems of documentation can be used with some slight modifications.
Generally, to cite your reference correctly you should mention its author or authors, its title, place of publication, publisher and publication date.
To learn more detailed info on this reference style you may click here.














