Why Your Research Paper Citation Needs to be Perfect

When writing research papers, you are essentially taking most of the information from another source — which is why research paper citations are so important. Even more importantly, they need to be formatted correctly. This is where a lot of students run into trouble. After all, there are so many different formats: MLA, APA, and Chicago style are just a few of the formats commonly used. So, in addition to discussing why correct citations are so important, we are also going to see a few examples for each separate style.

The odds that you will have to write at least one APA style research paper during your academic career are quite high.  The APA format is one of most commonly used citation styles, right up there with MLA.  The APA acronym stands for the American Psychological Association.  As you might therefore imagine, the style is especially popular in psychology classes, along with sociology courses and anthropology courses, among a number of others.  A lot of it really depends on your professors’ individual preferences, but in general, you will find that the aforementioned classes rely on APA, while English and literature classes rely on MLA.