Citation styles, quickly
Enough to choose the right one and avoid the mistakes markers see most.
Which style goes with which field
If you've been given a style, use it. If a journal's author guidelines name one, those guidelines override anything here.
Harvard has no single official manual, so check your own university's version.
| Style | In-text format | Typical fields |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7th | (Author, year) | Psychology, education, social sciences |
| MLA 9th | (Author page) | Literature, languages, humanities |
| Chicago | Footnotes, or (Author year) | History, arts, some social sciences |
| Harvard | (Author year) | Widely used in UK and Australian universities |
| IEEE | [1], numbered in order of appearance | Engineering, computer science |
| Vancouver | (1) or superscript, numbered | Medicine, health sciences |
Details people get wrong
In APA 7th, a work with three or more authors is cited as the first author plus "et al." from the first mention, and the reference list gives up to 20 authors.
In IEEE, numbers follow the order in which sources first appear, and a source keeps its number when you cite it again. In MLA 9th, the in-text citation gives a page number and no year.
Chicago comes in two systems, notes-bibliography and author-date. Make sure you know which one you've been asked for.
What needs a citation
Anyone else's findings, data, ideas, methods, figures and exact words. What doesn't: your own results in the paper you're writing, and common knowledge in your field.
If you're unsure whether something counts as common knowledge, cite it. Over-citing is a minor style problem. Under-citing is an integrity problem.
Primary over secondary
If you learned about a study from a review article, find and read the original before you cite it. Citing a claim through someone else's description is how misquotations spread, and many styles require you to mark secondary citations as such.