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History

This guide is for history research at CSUDH.

Modern Language Association (MLA) Style

The Modern Language Association (MLA) provides a method for source documentation that is used in most humanities courses. The humanities place emphasis on authorship, so most MLA citations involve recording the author’s name in the physical text. The author’s name is also the first to appear in the “Works Cited” page at the end of an essay.

Quick reference and examples can be found below in these guides created by several other universities:

Formatting in MLA (at the Purdue Owl)

Quick formatting tips for MLA Style (From ASU Student Success Center) 

Chicago/Turabian Style

The Chicago Manual of Style includes 2 documentation styles: the Notes-Bibliography System (NB), used by those in literature, history, and the arts, and the Author-Date System, which is similar in content, slightly different in form, and preferred in the social sciences.

In addition to consulting The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) for more information, students may also find it useful to consult Kate L. Turabian's Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (8th ed.). Often called "Turabian" style, it resembles the two patterns of documentation but includes alterations geared to papers written by students.

Guide on Chicago Style from Long Island University 

Formatting in Chicago Style (Purdue OWL)

Zotero

Zotero is a free, open-source program that can be downloaded as a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, and as a standalone program that works with Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. For most databases and websites, citation information can be saved with just a few clicks. You can also download an extension for Microsoft Word, that will allow you to drag records in Zotero into your word document to instantly create citations in formats like MLA and APA.

Zotero is already installed on all the computers in the CSUDH library.