How to Cite Sources in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and IEEE
The core rules behind common citation styles, with a workflow for keeping in-text citations and reference entries consistent.
Citation styles encode different priorities
APA foregrounds author and date because recency matters in many social sciences. MLA foregrounds author and page because textual location matters. Chicago, Harvard, and IEEE each solve the same trust problem with different conventions.
Rather than memorizing every rule, learn the pattern for source type, in-text marker, and reference entry. Then check edge cases against the current style guide.
- Capture DOI, URL, publisher, journal, volume, issue, pages, and access dates early.
- Use one citation style consistently across the project.
- Audit every in-text citation against the final reference list.
The best citation workflow starts before drafting
Do not wait until the end to build references. Save source metadata as you read and attach notes to the claim each source supports.
When drafting, insert citations where claims depend on evidence. A later formatting pass can adjust style, but missing provenance is much harder to reconstruct.
Put the guide to work
Draft with your sources visible.
Start a Thesion project, gather sources, and keep citations attached while you build the draft.