Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and Bedford-St. Martin's Press Web Pages for Scholarly Document Format

        Purdue's OWL is one of the oldest online academic writing center resources, and their helpful documentation format web pages offer specific examples of MLA and APA style.  They also provided the same links we offer below to the Bedford-St.Martin's Press's online guides to CSE style.  Scholars take documentation format seriously as a sign of the author's attention to detail, and mistakes can mislead readers, or worse.  If you right click on the link and open it as a new window, you can resize it and your paper's window so that you can see the format examples and your own references side by side.  Don't guess!  Look it up!

Natural Sciences: Council of Sciences Editors (CSE, formerly "CBE") format. (At Bedford-St.Martin's Press's "Hacker Handbooks" web site.)

Social Sciences (including Psychology): American Psychological Association (APA) format.

Languages and Literature: Modern Language Association format.

History and Philosophy: University of Chicago format.  (At Bedford-St.Martin's Press's "Hacker Handbooks" web site.) This footnote-style format is also sometimes called "Turabian," after the popular style guide author, Kate Turabian.

        Note that these format styles are likely to be the ones your instructors will want in each discipline, but nothing prevents you from asking your instructors which documentation style they prefer.  Doing so will remind them that you care about details, and that's good for your scholarly reputation. If nobody is available to ask, you cannot go far wrong if you use the documentation style of the sources you are citing.