Always go to the source for citation formatting help.
If you are in graduate school you should buy a copy of the manual you will need. They are free with membership to the organizations or we have copies in the library.
Try these tutorials
For example, understanding the elements of citations helps with
In this workshop, you will learn
(in no particular order)
Different type of works require different types of citation elements. The 3 most common types of works you will encounter are:
You might be given a complete citation. Knowing how to interpret the elements will help you access that material.
1. Read from left to right
MLA example of a journal article citation:
Benjamin, Shanna Greene. “The Space That Race Creates: An Interstitial Analysis of Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif.’” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 40, no. 1, 2013, pp. 87-106.
APA example of a journal article
Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185
2. Pick out key elements
3. Identify what type of work it is. This will help you develop a strategy for finding the information.
4. How can you access it?
Research Minutes: How to Read Citations
Research Minutes is a series for undergraduate students at Cornell University covering library research topics. This episode covers how to read citations of books, book articles, and journal articles.