Fun With Style (APA, MLA, and TURABIAN/CHICAGO)

Categories: Nonfiction

The title of this entry may seem like an oxymoron, and it is.  The good news is that if you haven't had to write a research paper since 1985, you may not know that you can permanently delete "ibid." from your vocabulary.

The library and the Net have a lot of good resources.  We've got the brand new Concise Rules of APA Style and the 5th edition (the most recent) of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.  If your instructor asks for the Turabian/Chicago style of citation, your best bet would be to drop the course, but if that's not an option, you can get pre-electronic guidelines from A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.

Almost every university has its own citation Web site.  One of the most respected is Purdue University's OWL.  While some of the resources are available only to Purdue students, the APA and MLA guidelines are free to everyone.  OWL is especially appealing because of up-to-date rules for documenting electronic sites, such as Web sites and journals accessed online.  Up-to-date instructions for the Turabian/Chicago style of citation can be found at this University of Wisconsin at Madison site.

Of course, there are other ways.  If you just can't bear the idea of doing a Works Cited page, you can buy software that will do the work for you.

You can also find free or nearly free source-citation software, such as Landmark's Son of Citation Machine and KnightCite.  Check with your instructor to see if you're allowed to use these.