The research process involves familiarizing yourself with the ideas of others in order to form your own perspectives or arguments, perform experiments, and create new work. In doing research you will often read books and articles that present different ideas and arguments from many authors. From these ideas you will create your own and incorporate them into your writing. As a responsible researcher, it is essential to give credit to the ideas and work of other researchers.

One of the best ways to avoid plagiarism is to carefully cite the information sources you use, whether they come from the Web or from print materials. The Citation Builder illustrates how to cite some common resources in the MLA and Chicago citation styles.

Some sources you use may not fit neatly into these formats. You should always verify the citation you create with the Citation Builder with a style manual before submitting your final work to an instructor.

Would you like to learn more about Citation Builder? Are you interested in using or adapting Citation Builder? Learn more about Citation Builder now!

UNC-Chapel Hill wishes to acknowledge LOBO (© 2003 North Carolina State University) as source material for Citation Builder.

What type of information source do you have?

• Book
• Chapter or Essay from a Book
• Scholarly Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Web Site (use for Web sites that cannot be cited as one of the above sources)

The Citation Builder is based on the following citation manuals: