The Dean's Book Course Guide to
Source Citation & Documentation
Various disciplines rely on various styles of documentation when citing sources. Writers in the arts and humanities usually follow the forms of the Modern Language Association (MLA); social scientists typically adhere to the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines; many writers in the natural sciences as well as mathematics follow the Council of Science Editors (formerly the Council of Biology Editors or CBE) style. Historians traditionally follow a fourth guide, The Chicago Manual of Style, often referred to as “Turabian” for Kate Turabian, dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. Some book and journal editors produce their own individual style guides as well.
We ask all members of the Dean’s Book Course community to accept the conventions of MLA style. It suits our tasks, represents a widely recognized style, and allows us all to “speak” a common documentation language.You may be asked to use other styles in other courses. No one style is absolutely better than the rest. The sites below provide MLA citation information, models and helpful tools:
Guides to generating MLA-formatted citations in major databases:
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