Learning Citation Styles - is it tough for writers?

For those who do this for a living, how hard has it been learning the various styles? I have noticed that, for me at least, the most different part of essay writing has been learning the endless differences between Chicago, MLA, APA, Turabian, etc... I always try to go above and beyond in the correct formats, but am I stressing over something that is not even paid much attention to anyways? Do you guys cite as you go along, or go back through the paper at the end and add your citations/footnotes?

I have the same problem. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but many professors relish the whole formatting and style concept and love to nitpick. It's best to master the styles and use them even when they aren't being heavily enforced. Almost all of my work is MLA and APA. If you get something slightly wrong, it's usually only a point or two counted off, so not fatal, but best just to get it right.

When I first started, I kept examples of APA and MLA taped above my monitor to help me. I don't need these now, but they helped at first. The first 10,000 papers are always the hardest.

By the way, when do Turabian, Harvard, etc. ever comes up? For me, they never do.

it's best to know all of them as a background. I usually have to look up how to do legal citations.

Harvard and Oxford seems to be the most common styles requested in the UK. Strictness of enforcement depends on the lecturer, most are happy if the style is near enough but I remember the odd pedantic lecturer who would obsess over every minute detail. As for the question of referencing as I go or going back the answer depends. If i'm stating something that I know I have a tried and tested source for that I've used many times before then I generally go back. If i'm referencing a statistic or something new then I add the citation as I go along so I don't lose it/forget it.

I've found that as long as you're consistent in the citation style, most people are happy. It just takes a minute to review the style if you aren't familiar with it, though, and it gets easier every time.


This is the sad situation with APA where virtually every single thought, introductory statement or suggestion must be referenced in some fashion. APA makes for difficult reading (and writing) when it is strictly enforced.

One of the best ways of learning citation styles in an academic setting is to go to your university library and study hard to learn it. I've written a short essay on my reflections on understanding libraries as institutions:

REFLECTIONS ON CITATION STYLES

Through the readings and musings of these chapters, I feel like it does give us a better understanding and overall grasp of libraries as institutions. The structural breakdown of the historical aspects of libraries - from a space to facilitate higher thinking, to the collection of documented knowledge, and the changes in terms of public accessibility largely brought about by the advent of printing, to the emergence of the library sciences; all clearly aid in contribution to the finalized concept of libraries as organized institutions. Furthermore, a smooth transition in the literature addressing the changes brought about by technological advances from a computing perspective, and their due effects on today`s libraries, also for me, shed light upon the potential shifts in organization that would be necessary to appropriately accommodate and capitalize upon these new and powerful gifts of science.

I was especially interested in the censorship issue which was brought up. It had me looking into further readings on the subject, as well as reflecting on the validity of censorship based on societal pressures and the grey area it encompassed. To use for example, the situation of school libraries. On the one hand, there was the basic idea that institutions of knowledge had a responsibility to protect innocent young minds. However, I am forced to query, from what? Damaging information? However, information can only be damaging if it is misinterpreted, whether intentionally or otherwise. Even then, to take a broader perspective, the definition of adjectives such as "damaging" or "empowering", are going to be largely based on the culture or social setting, passing judgment on a given piece of material. This leads me on, to the other hand, where we need to question if we are giving our young people enough credit. Does the ability to think critically not require varying points of view, and an open mind regarding "right" and "wrong"?

The American Library Association (ALA) recommends a promotion of intellectual freedom. In my personal opinion, I do strongly agree on their stance against pre censorship and immediate removal of library materials based on an initial complaint. I am however, in two minds about the recommendation for not needing parental permission to view material that may be deemed inappropriate for certain age groups. In this case, I think that perhaps a parental guidance clause could be exercised, rather than expressly required; due to the varying levels of maturity when it comes to our young people. Overall, these readings from the textbook and their counterparts, have enabled me to reflect on the need for our education system to emphasize independent thought, analysis and reflection; rather than for our libraries to play watchdog.

The next chapter had me enjoying immensely, the section on the historical journey of libraries. It was also extremely interesting to read about physical libraries changing from a space for books, to a gradual progression towards incorporating technology as a facilitator of knowledge in the library environment; and even the advent of online libraries in cyber space, where a physical presence is not even required.

Further readings took me back to the ALA site where discussions on the role of the 21st century library, pointed to a very sound prediction - that while the physical library institution would continue to exist for users, their emphasis would change from a place where documents were kept, to a community based center to foster collaboration and communication, whilst at the same time, offering visitors an entry point to a network of digital materials and services, thus maintaining their relevancy in a cyber-age. That a pessimistic outlook regarding our future libraries is unfounded.

As this step by step progression incorporating new technologies takes place in public and school libraries, one is forced to wonder on the issue of censorship in this context and the increasing difficulty in doing so, as information, regardless of quality is uploaded online at an incredible rate. On top of that, Rubin also brings forth the issue of deception and how the ease of indulging in it, in an electronic environment makes it both widespread and to a large part, undetectable. The first thing that comes to mind in terms of a school library situation, is that of plagiarism. This is a serious issue that we as librarians and keepers of knowledge should consider. As technology advances, so will the tendency for misuse of it, and thus the operations to combat this.

Finally, I was very intrigued with the rise of wikis, blogs and e-books. Through the readings, I was compelled to search up a wiki on libraries and to my surprise, it existed in the form of WikiBooks - "open books for an open world". While use of wikis and blogs have been long admonished in the realm of scholarly writing and academics due to their openness to information reconstruction, and claims without citation, we are unable to ignore their very real presence. The interesting part here that yet remains to be seen, is how the library institution is going to reorganize to fully monitor, incorporate and take advantage of these powerful modern tools.

References:

ALA. School Library Media Centers and Intellectual Freedom | American Library.

Rubin, R. he Library as an Institution: An Organizational Perspective. In Foundations of Library and Information Science.

WikiBooks. Introduction to Library and Information Science/Technology and Libraries: Impacts and Implications.

I was lucky enough to attend college during the time when the writing styles were being strictly implemented. Therefore, I had a head-start on the other academic writers who had to learn the writing styles from scratch. By the time that I had to regularly use the MLA and APA writing styles, those were already second nature to me due to the number of research papers I had to write for myself while in college.

So I preferred to write more along those lines when I first started out. I did not branch out into Chicago and Turabian writing styles until a year after I had started my company attached writing career.

I found that using the Owl at Purdue and other writing websites helped me make a less painful transition to the other academic writing styles. I only needed to practice writing in Chicago and Turabian around 3 times before I became comfortable with it. The same goes for the Harvard and Oxford styles. Since I was writing at least a thousand papers per month in various formats and styles, I developed my writing style in all areas at a fast pace. I am proud to say that I learned the other styles on the job and my clients, at the time, were very happy with the results.

Citation styles are only tough to follow for students who do not have an affinity for writing. As a professional academic writer, using the correct writing formats should be something that we learned way back during our own educational days. From APA, MLA, Turabian, etc. all of these were used at least once by each of us. Personally, I prefer the MLA style of citation. It is the simplest form of citation as far as I am concerned. However, various students will have various writing requirements. For my writers who are educated state-side or in the UK, they don't struggle with citation problems. The others, who are good writers, but lacking in formatting skills, find themselves learning on the job. The OWL at Purdue is a godsend for most of them. However, online citation generators have also made their jobs easier. While I frown on the use of these generators, I allow its use if it means the client will get a well written and high quality paper. I make sure that my QAD is always on the lookout for any citation problems so that it can be corrected before the paper goes out.

There's no shortage of online guidance for citation styles. The vast majority of academic projects typically request APA, MLA, Harvard, or Chicago style, but a good writer can handle any style required, including OSCOLA and Bluebook for advance law projects.

Citation styles can make one lose marks for improper paper format. Purdue OWL provides all the details and sample papers for various citation styles. However, there is a hack that one can use to make citations. This involves using citation sites such as citethisforme.com, citefast.com, Zotero, bibme.org etc. I normally use citethisforme.com for my papers. All I have to do afterword is to format the cover page as desired and include all the details. The site has eased my way of citing and referencing my work.

I think mastering the formatting of styles really is more about practicing them all over again. I also found that once you can professionally grasp two or three, adapting to other citation styles would get easier over time. It's all about practice.

It is actually the citation style demands of the college level papers that set the ENL writers apart from the ESL writers. ENL writers will have gone through the English academic system. The said system has a slow progression when it comes to advancing the writing styles of the students. From the basic essays written in grade school, to the simple research papers written in high school, the student is exposed to a writing style that gets complicated with each research and essay paper written. It prepares the student for the citation style demands of the college paper.

An ESL writer will not have been exposed to the same type of training in writing styles so they would tend to struggle when it comes to using the citation styles in their papers. That said, the citation styles can be learned and, as FreelanceWriter indicated, there is no shortage of citation style tutorial sites online. It will just take some time for the ESL writer to become proficient in using the various styles. They eventually learn how to use the proper citation style for a particular writing format.

I could not possibly disagree with this more strongly. The one thing that ESL writers often tend to do as well as many ENL writers is cite their sources, and for a very simple reason: one doesn't need to be able to write well just to follow the rules of citation styles by rote; so they put much of their effort into that relatively trivial element of academic essays. Some of my clients who found me only after already having been ripped off by my cheap competitors have shown me the atrociously-bad essays they received from them, many of which were perfectly "referenced" and "cited" in APA or MLA or Chicago style, despite being composed of absolutely nothing of substantive value and/or completely incoherent gibberish written in obvious ESL-English. It takes zero writing talent or intellectual ability to follow citation-style guidelines about how to list the names of authors and whether (or where) to use italics and where to insert the publication dates of sources in a reference listing. All of that can be learned (or followed) by just about anybody who can type out words on a keyboard.