Citation Styles: Home

Citation is the process of giving credit to the sources used in a paper or presentation.

It is used for a number of reasons

• to acknowledge another's idea
• to differentiate your own ideas from others
• to increase your own credibility by drawing on another's authority
• to help your reader find your sources
• to avoid plagiarism

These general ideas about citation are true across different styles, but different disciplines (subjects) use different styles. Styles are sets of rules for how a paper should look, and these rules vary a little bit by the style. The most commonly used styles at Valencia are: APA, Chicago, and MLA.