Formatting Styles

Understand conventions for citing information.

Different academic disciplines and journals have unique formatting guidelines for citing sources and formatting research reports. Remarkably, there are hundreds of different formatting guidelines for referencing sources. This section briefly summarizes the most popular citation styles used in colleges and universities:

1. MLA

Humanities professors commonly require citations to be formatted according to MLA (Modern Language Association) guidelines. Information in this section pertains to the guidelines set forth by the 7th edition of The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

2. APA