Top Ten Hints for Formatting Citations Properly

1. Follow the format prescribed (by advisor, publisher, etc) faithfully.
2. Make sure all the elements in the citation are present, for example
   • for books you need author, title, publisher, city and date
   • for journal articles you need author, article title, journal title, vol., no., date, pages
3. Always use the same order for the elements in a citation, for example
   • author, title, publisher, city, date.
   • author, date, article title, journal title, vol., no, pages.
4. Be consistent in formatting author name, for example
   • Forman, J. L. and Zhu, Y.-J.
   • T. J. Anderson and H.-S. Wang
5. Be consistent in formatting volume, issue and paging information, for example
   • vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 64-75
   • 6(3), 64-75
6. Use italics for titles of whole works such as books, journals, conference proceedings and technical report series.
7. Use "quote marks" for parts of whole works, such as chapters in a book, articles in a journal, papers in a conference proceeding, or a report in a series. In some styles, the quote marks are not used for parts of whole works. The text is left plain.
8. Cite web sites the same way you would cite a published work, with all the elements (if available) in the same order. [Add the URL, the accessed date, and the DOI if there is one]. (The DOI is a digital object identifier that stays with an object in spite of its possible relocation on the web. You can find papers on the web by searching the DOI number only.)
9. If you cite a published article or book that is the online equivalent of a paper publication, just cite the publication without the URL or access date. Your reader may not have access to the same online materials.
10. Spell out the titles of journals whenever possible. This helps your reader find it online.

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Updated February 2007 by Dorothy Byers