Midterms have wrapped up and final course projects are looming in many subject areas. If you use citation style guides or ask students to use them, read on! The NMC Library offers some quick and easy to digest web-based style guides under their “Get Citation Help” page that the Writing and Reading Center Readers will refer your students to when we meet with them. We also share this Side By Side Citation Style Comparison Guide with your students as they are often instructed to use MLA style in English classes and APA or CMS in other classes, so it helps them see the differences. Many students learn to use Noodle Tools Bibliography Manager, “a citation management tool that the library subscribes to for all NMC users. It offers simple step-by-step guidance through the process of citing and annotating sources, and creating works cited or bibliography pages.” Instructors who assign annotated bibliographies have found NoodleTools to be particularly helpful for their students, as it allows students to manage citations and annotations within one platform and then simply export the bibliography when finished, so they can spend more time analyzing and making connections between sources, and less time indenting and formatting. Please continue encouraging your students to use these resources!
If you ask your students for a variation on the published style guides, please consider sharing your variation sample handouts or drafts with the WRC so we can best advise your students. The WRC strives to tell students the correct information related to the most up to date versions of these styles, and we are striving for seamless faculty and WRC collaboration to help your students succeed. Some variations we have seen this fall in custom style guides include modifications to Chicago style’s notes and bibliography format, specific formatting instructions that contradict MLA’s italics/quotation marks instructions, and removal of cover pages for APA style. If modifying a style guide is something you do, please share your handouts and model drafts with us: writingreadingcenter@nmc.edu.
Feel free to reach out to me: swangler@nmc.edu for any WRC related questions or to Nicco Pandolfi: npandolfi@nmc.edu for any NMC Library related questions on this subject.