5 Easy Steps to Citing in MLA, Chicago, or APA and a Checklist
Nobody likes bibliographies. Students don’t like making bibliographies. Teachers don’t like checking over bibliographies. Heck, even librarians don’t like bibliographies. Nonetheless, it’s important to give credit to your research sources, and there’s nothing worse than writing a great paper and getting a lower grade because you messed up your stupid bibliography. The good news though is that bibliographies are SUPER easy! If you just follow these 6 steps, you should be able to finish your bibliography or works cited in only a couple minutes and you’ll get free points that make you one step closer to that A.
1. Find out what kind of formatting you’re supposed to use
There are 3 common formats:
MLA (stands for Modern Language Association), which is used for English papers.
Chicago, which is used for history papers.
APA (stands for American Psychological Association), which is used for social science papers (mostly in college)
2. Ask your teacher about other specifics and take notes on what they say
Unless your teacher is really impatient and has spent a lot of time in class explaining how to make a bibliography, there’s absolutely NOTHING to lose by asking them questions. It makes you look like you care about your work and are a detailed oriented person, which is always a good thing. Plus, lots of teachers have special rules that may make your bibliography or works cited extra easy.
3. Get all your sources together
Hopefully you did this before writing your essay, since it’s hard to write a good paper without getting specific details. If you have literally no idea what to use as sources, then look back at all the facts you used in your essays and search for them on Google. Make sure the sites seem relatively academic and reliable.
4. Go to bibme.org and have them make the citations for you
You may have heard of other sites like NoodleTools or EasyBib, but those sites have some fees at the time of this post. With bibme.org, all you need to know is the type of source (if you’re uncertain, ask a librarian or search around), and you can have a bibliography automatically made for you in seconds.
5. Copy/Paste your text and make a Hanging Indent
In Microsoft Word: Highlight your bibliography text and click on Format -> Paragraph on the top bar and then under Special, select Hanging
In Google Docs: Highlight your bibliography text and look for the small blue triangle in the top left margin. Drag the bottom triangle over half an inch. Then, drag the top part of the triangle back to the original margin.
Finally, run through this checklist to make sure everything is in order
- Is your header formatted properly
- Ask your teacher how they want your headers to look and if they want page numbers included
- Do you need footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical citations?
- Again, ask your teacher if you’re not sure
- Are your sources separated by type (primary or secondary)?
- Some teachers like you to separate primary sources, which are written by people involved in the events, and secondary sources, which are written by people not directly involved in the event or writing about
- Are your sources all alphabetized?
- This is an easy one for teachers to spot if you don’t put all your sources in alphabetical order
- Do they want you to specify “Print” or “Web” at the end of sources?
- Most teachers probably won’t care, but it doesn’t hurt to check and show them that you care about the details
- Did you include URLs or Date Accessed on website citations?
- Check with your teacher to see if they want these included or not
And THAT’S IT!! Comment below if you found this helpful or have any questions, and happy formatting!!!
