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Research Paper Writing & Citing

A guide to writing research papers and the main bibliographic styles, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, ASA, etc.

Resources and Guides

Citation Guides

The citation and reference format you use will depend on both the citation style you are writing in (such as MLA, APA, or Chicago) and the type of source you're citing (such as a book, journal article, or film). These citation guides and manuals can get you started. 

Citation Managers

Save time with citation managers

Citation managers help you keep track of articles and books as you find them, tag and annotate them, and easily create citations and bibliographies in Microsoft Word.

The citation managers William & Mary Libraries recommend are RefWorks and Zotero:

Use caution with citation managers.

Using a citation manager can save you a lot of time, but for any automatically-generated citation, reference, or note - whether it's from a database or a citation manager - you still must double-check for accuracy using one of the above guides.

Print Guides

Resources in the library catalog

You can use the library catalog to find print citation guides for styles not covered in the above guides, such as Bluebook. 

Questions? Ask a Librarian!

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William & Mary Libraries
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W&M Libraries Research Desk
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