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The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

An introduction to the basics for students, faculty and staff, offering print and online resources, links to articles, databases and more.

More on Citations 


Visit the guide below for more help with:

  • reading citations
  • organizing your sources
  • creating annotated bibliographies
  • avoiding plagiarism 

Modern Language Association (MLA)


The Modern Language Association (MLA) provides a method for source documentation that is used in most humanities courses. The humanities place emphasis on authorship, so most MLA citations involve recording the author’s name in the physical text. The author’s name is also the first to appear on the “Works Cited” page at the end of an essay.

Quick reference and examples can be found below in these guides created by several other universities:

APA Style

American Psychological Association (APA)


The APA (American Psychological Association) Style Manual is most commonly used by writers of social science papers. It offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations, tables, and reference pages.

Quick reference and examples can be found below in these guides created by APA itself, and other universities:

CMOS Style

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) & Turabian


The Chicago Manual of Style includes 2 documentation styles: the Notes-Bibliography System (NB), used by those in literature, history, and the arts, and the Author-Date System, which is similar in content, slightly different in form, and preferred in the social sciences.

In addition to consulting The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) for more information, students may also find it useful to consult Kate L. Turabian's Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations  (8th ed.). Often called the "Turabian" style, it resembles the two patterns of documentation but includes alterations geared to papers written by students.

Quick reference and examples can be found below in these guides created by several other universities: