Social Work

Citation styles provide rules for how to cite your sources. The three most common citation styles are APA, MLA and Chicago. APA is often, but not always, the citation style used for Social Work papers. A basic journal article citation in APA style looks like this: 

Here is a sentence that needs a citation (John & Klein, 2003).

Reference List: 
John, A., & Klein, J. (2003). The boycott puzzle: consumer motivations for purchase sacrifice. Management Science, 49(9), 1196-1209.

VERY OFTEN, you can AUTOMATICALLY GENERATE and COPY/PASTE CITATIONS for your Reference List. See below for directions. It's still a very good idea to become familiar with the actual rules of the citation styles so that you can correct the auto-generated citations, because they often have small errors in them. To see examples and explanations of the rules for the three most common styles: 

OWL @ Purdue Guide to APA Style
OWL @ Purdue Guide to MLA Style
OWL @ Purdue Guide to Chicago Style
We recommend the OWL@Purdue site. It describes not just citation styles, but also how to format your paper, etc. If you need more detail check out the printed manuals for each style, which are available in the Library. 

There are many other citation styles beyond these three. See this guide to choosing the right style, with links to more resources for styles such as ACS, AMA, NLM, CSE others.