Styles of formatting and citation, whether MLA, APA, or Chicago, provide a platform for academic dialogue within a discipline. The various style guides all explain how to incorporate sources responsibly into one's own researched writing. They all provide a means for the reader to locate and retrieve information about published works that are cited in an academic paper.

Style guides vary with the research emphases of each discipline. Though the differences between the style guides may seem minor, they reflect important aspects of a discipline. For example, in the social sciences, the recentness of a publication often determines its relevance and authority; therefore, in APA style (used in the social sciences), the date is included in the citation within the essay as well as in the references section. In MLA style (used in the humanities), where the recentness of the research is less crucial, the date is not included in a parenthetical reference, but only on the works cited page.

MLA Style Guides

• Unraveling the Mysteries of MLA Formattings, a step-by-step formatting guide by Lee Ella Oglesbee, JBU Writing Consultant
• Using Modern Language Association (MLA) Format by the Purdue University Online Writing Lab
• A Guide for Writing Research Papers Based on MLA Documentation by Capital Community College
• MLA Style Electronic Formats by Dr. Mary Ellen Guffey

APA Style

• Texas A&M Guide to APA, a helpful 2-page handout with sample in-text citations and reference lists
• Citing Sources in APA Style by Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/citingapa.html)
• Documenting Sources: Using APA Format by Purdue University

CHICAGO Style

• Chicago/Turabian Documentation by the UW at Madison (http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html)

Other Style Guides

• AAA Style Guide by the American Anthropological Association (http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.pdf)
• AMA (American Medical Association) Citation Style (http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citama.htm)
  provided by B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library
• APSA (American Political Science Association) Style Guide  (http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocAPSA.html)
  by the UW at Madison
• ASA (American Sociological Association) Style Guide  (http://www.isr.bucknell.edu/Research_Tools/Citation_guides/asa.pdf)
  by Bucknell University
• Citation of Legal and Non-Legal Electronic Database Information (http://www.michbar.org/publications/citation.htm)
  by Candace Elliott Person, RN, JD
• Columbia University Press' Guide to Online Style (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html)
  addresses MLA, Chicago, APA, and CBE styles
• Film/Video Citations Using Common Citation Styles (http://www.library.american.edu/subject/film/film_citing_styles.html)
  by the American University Library
• Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications (http://exlibris.memphis.edu/govpubs/citeweb.htm)
  by the University of Memphis
• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation by Peter W. Martin (http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/)