Reference Styles. MLA (Modern Language Association) is a newer system. History departments seem to be the last place using the old superscript system, which involves putting a little raised number that refers either to a footnote at the foot of the page, or to an endnote at the end of the paper. All other humanities departments use the MLA style. The sciences use the APA style described in the next section. The differences are only in the method of citing a text, not in quoting it.

The sciences tend to refer primarily to published papers, and these are indicated by the last name of the author and the date of the publication. Thus, for the APA style, created by the American Psychological Association, the citation in the text in parentheses will have the author's name, paper date, and page numbers with the p.'s; an example is ( Smith, 1998, pp. 3-7).

Basically, numerous books exist, but if you are consistent and use common sense, you ought to be able to figure out what is the minimum you can get away with. If not, check out these websites: for MLA style, http://www/mla.org/set_sd.htm , and for the APA, http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html