Citation Styles Guide

When writing a paper it is important to make sure you cite your sources correctly in order to avoid plagiarism.  Plagiarism is defined in the Texas A&M University-San Antonio's Student Handbook (November 2017) as:

"Plagiarism - The act of passing off some other person’s ideas, words, or work as one’s own. Examples include, but are not limited to, (1) The use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without acknowledgement, documentation or citation; (2) The unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials."

The University Library offers an online course, "Avoiding Plagiarism: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due," that presents information on how to avoid plagiarism in your writing.  For more information, check out the library's Academic Tools for the Research Process Guide where you'll find this course and several others.

There are many citation styles which format citations a little differently, so please click on the navigation buttons to the left for more information on the style you need.  Do not trust online citation generators, the citation generator in Microsoft Office Word, or the citation option in any of the databases.  Almost all of these will give you a not-quite-perfect citation.

Turnitin is an online service that checks for similarities between your writing and that of others. It is used as a way to detect possible plagiarism. If your professor is using turnitin, you will submit your papers to turnitin in Blackboard. For more information, please refer to the TurnItIn Tools and Resources page on the Academic Technologies website.

Some instructors may have additional or specialized requirements for your citations, so when in doubt, ask your instructor what they prefer.