A citation style determines the information to include in the citation, the order of the information, the punctuation, and other formatting. Each discipline tends to use one or two citation styles. Style Guides, or Style Manuals, are guides for organizing and presenting documentation in a standardized form, often required by publishers and academic institutions for scholarly works.

Why are there so many citation styles? Many disciplines use a specialized citation style specific to their needs. For instance, Chicago handles non-text based sources more easily than MLA. The styles below are the most common used here at CSB/SJU, but check with your professor for the particular class recommendation. One of the most important aspects of citation is consistency within a paper.

Citation Style	Disciplines	Type of citation
MLA	English, humanities	Parenthetical (author-page number)
APA	Psychology, education, social sciences, business, economics, sciences	Parenthetical (author-date)
Chicago / Turabian Notes & Bibliography	History, humanities, business, economics, theology, fine arts, natural sciences, social sciences	Notes (footnotes or endnotes)
Chicago / Turabian Author-Date	Sciences, social sciences, humanities	Parenthetical (author-date)

The following official style guides are available at Alcuin (SJU) and Clemens (CSB).

Chicago Manual of Style (online eBook)

The official guide to APA style. (7th edition) (print book)

MLA Handbook (print book)

Purdue OWL

The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) provides detailed examples and citation guides for MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.