The citations in a research report must be arranged in a widely accepted uniform pattern. It will
help the researcher to organise and place the research report within an
academic standard. There are several style manuals, which provide guidelines to
organise a research report and also arranging citations properly. The three
most commonly used style manuals are:
- MLA: Modern Language Association
- APA: American Psychological Association
- Chicago Manual by University of Chicago
These research style manuals
provide a set of rules and instructions to the researchers to organise the research
report in a standard pattern. Apart from the guidelines to citations, a research
style manual provides instructions to organise the basic elements of a report
like:
- The font style and font size
- Page numbering and line spacing
- Title and sub-title arrangements
- Paragraph arrangements
- Margin settings
- Rules for using various punctuation marks
- Rules for using abbreviations, tables, figures, appendix, and index
The Popular Citation Style Manuals
MLA: It is the formatting style of the Modern Language Association. It is
generally used in English and humanities. The MLA Handbook outlines a two-level
citation method to provide a reference to a particular source: (i) in-text
citation and (ii) Works Cited. It means when citing a source, the researcher
has to include its information in two places.
APA: is the formatting style for
the American Psychological Association, which is also used in social sciences. The APA style uses the author/date in-text citation with the reference list
at the end of the research report.
Chicago Citation Style: It is the method established by the University of Chicago Press. It
is widely used for academic writing in the humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences. A slight modification of the Chicago style is known as Turabian
style. Chicago/Turabian style features two basic documentation systems: (1) Notes-Bibliography Style and (2) Author-Date Style
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