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Bibliographic Styles

Over time, hundreds of organizations have developed their own distinct style guides for published work. Some style guides are specific to certain disciplines, while others are adopted for broader use. These style guides provide guidelines for citations and bibliography formats, as well as more general writing issues like punctuation, margins and much more.

Below is a list of the style guides used most frequently.

Examples of Commonly Used Styles
Area of Study Writing Style Guides Additional Information
Biosciences CSE Style Manual C-S or N-Y Council of Scientific Editors. The C-S style is a numbered citation style. The N-Y style follows a name and year citation format.
Science Harvard BS 5605:1990 (British Standard). Harvard system has standards for the order and content of information in the reference, not the format or layout on the page. Many variations of layout are acceptable, provided they are used consistently.
Chemistry ACS American Chemical Society
Engineering IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Humanities Chicago 16th A or B Chicago Manual of Style
Humanities Turabian A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
General Annotated This is a generic style that includes an alphabetically-sorted bibliography and abstracts.
General Author-Date Also see Harvard.
Language and Linguistics MLA Modern Language Association
Medicine JAMA American Medical Association Manual of Style, 9th Edition
Medicine NLM National Library of Medicine (including the 2001 supplement for internet citations)
Medicine Vancouver or UNIFORM Requirements International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
Psychology APA 6th American Psychological Association
Sociology ASA Style Guide American Sociological Association
Physics/Chemistry AIP Style Manual 4th Edition American Institute of Physics Style Manual 4th Edition

Not sure which style to use?

If you are unsure which bibliographic style to use, refer to the Area of Study to determine which one is right for you.

 
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This help page last modified 08/05/2009
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