Skip to Main Content

Prep School Library: Citation Help

This guide contains resources for PS students including database links, tutorials, book recommendations and more!

What Citation Style Should I Use?

At CGPS, we use MLA for English and History assignments and APA for Science. If you have any questions about which citation style to use, ask your teacher!

What's the deal with citation generators?

Good question! You may have heard differing opinions on citation generators from your teachers over the years. Some teachers encourage their use, some consider it a form of cheating. Of course, if your teacher tells you not to use them--don't! It's not worth losing the points. 
 
Overall, citation generators are fairly accurate at creating basic bibliographies. They tend to create errors when presented with tricky or complicated situations. If you can't tell if your citation is correct or not, you won't be able to catch these errors and you might lose points. 

The best generators out there are the scholarly ones: Noodletools, Refworks, etc. They can also help keep your research organized. But remember to check their work using a resource like Purdue Owl before finishing your works cited page.

Noodletools

Noodletools is a great resource for research organization and citations.

Want to make an account? Go to noodletools.com, click "login", then "register".

You'll be prompted to create a user ID and password--save them in your browser for easy access in the future!

 

Trying to register noodletools at home? You'll need the library password, which is:

username: cgps
password: library

Note: you will have to "validate" your account every year after Aug 1. This just involves confirming your username and the last 4 digits of your phone number. Save this info to your browser for easy validation.

MLA vs APA

MLA stands for Modern Language Association
Website: mla.org
 APA stands for American Psychological Association
Website: apa.org
These groups created citation styles, which are agreed upon rules for how to reference sources in our work. The associations produce style guides which helps writers format their work and cite appropriately. 

Why do we cite?

Purdue Owl

One of the best citation resources on the internet is Purdue Owl. There, you'll find pretty much anything you could want to know about all manner of citations, paper formatting and bibliographies. Check out Ms. F's tutorial to get the most from this site.

Bookmark owl.purdue.edu today!!