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How to Cite a Quotation

Learn the main styles for making a citation

When you’re writing a technical book, a professional guide, a scientific paper or a fictional book, you may have felt the need to quote an author.

Quotations are important to add credibility and knowledge to your own thoughts. Quoting doesn’t necessarily mean copying.

In scientific books and journals, every achievement or discovery is a result of several past layers of research and annotations. Each scientist adds new information by quoting the previous authors and professionals.

There are many ways of citing sources. A citation can be a phrase, a thought, a relevant saying or even a formula. In regular A4 documents, a quote should be immediately referred in the same page’s footnote.

There are many citation styles.
Let’s find out the correct way of quoting another else’s work, with examples of good practices:

Example 1 | Citing in a simple text
Writing and publishing a book is a desire provoked by the human’s brain (Parker, 1997) that is usually satisfied.

Example 2 | Citing in a journal
Parker, J.A., and L. Pen. 1997. The arts and the human brain. Monthly. Rev. Biol. 77: 27-34.

Example 3 | Citing in a book
Parker, J.A., and L. Pen. 1997. The arts and the human brain, 2nd ed. Covermore.

Example 4 | Citing in a book chapter
Parker, J.A., and L. Pen. 1997. The arts and the human brain, p. 233-240, 2nd ed. Covermore.

Example 5 | Citing in a newspaper article
Parker, J.A., and L. Pen. 1997. Brains control desire for writing books. Financial Times. Dec. 1998, 2:1 (col. 2), 11 (col. 4).

Basically, it’s important to cite all information about the author that is available, so that the reader may find or confirm the original idea or phrase.

There are five essential styles for citations: the Chicago Citation Style, the APA Citation Style, MLA Citation Style, the AMA Citation Style and the Turabian Citation Style.

The APA Citation Style is designed for the social sciences like psychology, sociology, economy, etc. The MLA Citation Style is targeted to the arts, literature, and all humanities.

The AMA Citation Style is for use in the biological sciences like medicine and general health activities. The Turabian Citation Style is used by university students, and the Chicago Citation Style aims to all books, newspapers and professional publications.

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