How To Cite Your Sources
First, you'll need to determine which CITATION STYLE your teacher prefers. The most common style, MLA, is what you will use unless otherwise directed by your teacher. Other citation styles include APA (Chemistry with Mrs. Brownridge and the Sciences), Chicago (International Relations with Mr. Newman and the Social Sciences), Turabian (Dr. Slater's Honors European History class), and other styles not as widely used in high school.
Next, you'll need to determine both IN TEXT (Parenthetical) and END OF TEXT citations.
In Text or Parenthetical Citations
These include the citations placed after direct quotations, paraphrases, facts, and ideas. Usually, they are placed in parentheses with the name of the source's author, the page number where the content appears in the source, and possibly the name of the original source if the author has more than one entry on the Works Cited page.
End of Text Citations
These include Works Cited pages, Bibliographies, Endnotes, Footnotes, and the like. Again, how you format these citations depends on your citation style.
Database Citation Tools
Finally, you can use citation tools or generators to create citations, particularly for end of text citations. With these tools, however, you must check the citation provided with your citation guide, like Purdue Owl.
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.