Never Worry about Plagiarism with These 60 Tips on Citation Styles

Regardless of what type of writing assignments your professor gives you in university, you must have knowledge of which citation styles to use. Why? Because if you use material from a particular source, you need to credit that source and provide the citation in the appropriate style. If you don’t give proper credit where it is due, you will be plagiarizing a source, and that can come with serious consequences. How many citation styles are there? There are many citation styles. These include APA citation style, MLA citation style, IEEE citation style, Turabian citation style, Vancouver citation style, ACS citation style, Harvard citation style, Chicago citation, and Oxford citation style. You must be aware of each of these. But first: It is critical that you understand some general information on citation styles and how to avoid plagiarism when writing.  And Custom-writing.org is here to help you! General tips When conducting online research for your writing assignment, you need to know what citation style you need to use. It is also critical that you understand how to avoid plagiarism. The following tips will help: Narrow down your topic: You must have a very clear idea of what you will be writing. This will guide your research and help you come up with original ideas and thoughts on the subject. Keep track of sources: It is crucial that you keep track of everything you read. You should record the full URL of every page you use and document everything you read. Record any details required by the citation style you will be using. Take notes: You need to summarize the relevant information you find from all sources you use. You can also record your thoughts on the subject matter (take care to always express them in your own words and never to use words from the original text). Mark fragments of the text: Any fragments of text you are considering citing in your paper should be clearly marked with citation marks, even if it is a single word. If you find fragments from the original source that you think you might use, you should also mark in a unique way (such as by using a different color or italics) and summarize so you will know it requires a citation should you decide to use it. Group URLs: Group the URLs and notes you are making use of in a manner that is meaningful, based on the type of information they contain. To aid you with this task, you can use special software, such as a citation manager, or you can use separate files and folders on your computer. Analyze: The key to avoiding plagiarism is to come up with original thoughts when it comes to the topic of your assignment, and you can do this only if you first analyze the materials found via research. Extract ideas from the text you read, think about them and identify their components and implications. Synthesize: This consists of connecting the various ideas you identified during your analysis and finding new relationships among them. It helps to add to your notes any new thoughts and to regroup your notes according to the new relationships.