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Choose a Documentation System

The documentation systems most commonly used in academic disciplines are the following:

MLA. This style, developed by the Modern Language Association, is used primarily in the humanities — English, philosophy, linguistics, world languages, and so on. See Chapter 21.
APA. Developed by the American Psychological Association, this style is used mainly in the social sciences — psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, education, and so on. See Chapter 22.
Chicago. Developed by the University of Chicago Press, this style is used primarily in history, journalism, and the humanities.
CSE. This style, developed by the Council of Science Editors (formerly the Council of Biology Editors), is used mainly in the physical and life sciences — chemistry, geology, biology, botany, and so on — and in mathematics.

Your choice of documentation system will be guided by the discipline or field within which you are writing and by any documentation requirements associated with your writing project. If your project has been assigned to you, ask the person who assigned it or someone who has written a similar document which documentation system you should use. If you are working on a project for a writing class, your instructor will usually tell you which documentation system to follow.

Your choice of documentation system will also be guided by the genre you have chosen for your document. For example, while academic essays and articles appearing in scholarly journals typically use a documentation system such as MLA or APA, newspaper and magazine articles often do not; instead, they identify sources in the main text of the document rather than in a works cited or references list. If you write an electronic document that cites other online sources, you might simply link to those sources.