When a student in college is assigned a paper, thesis, essay, dissertation, or other written work, it is typically requested in either MLA or PPA format. (The MLA is the Modern Language Association and the APA is the American Psychological Association.) Both formats offer accepted formats for student papers, which one is required will be left to the discretion of the instructor. However, each one
. of the above mentioned formats requires a citation page at the end of the assignment. A citation is a documentation of any reference sources that were used, quoted, or cited in the report. It is necessary to record the citation correctly at the end of the report in order for the report to be grammatically correct. When the student or researcher is citing information from any source, there is a specific formula in which the source must be recognized. This format is for all resources: periodicals; electronic sources; books; audio visual and other non-print sources, like television. The list of sources is broken down even more, for instance, the category of periodicals is broken down even more by subdividing into the categories of magazine, journal, newspaper, letter to the editor, etc. If the student is using a textbook with one author as a reference point in the APA format, the end product would look like this: Author Last Name, First. (year published). Title of Textbook: Article name. City, State of publication: Publisher Name. Rader, B.G. (2004). American sports: From the age of folk games to the age of televised sports. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. It will be imperative to submitting a correctly formatted paper if a passing grade is expected. The concisely structured format allows scholars, teachers and other students to correctly identify the sources, which will eliminate any unforeseen issues (like plagiarism claims, for example). More Reference Links: mhhe.com/bmhh mcgraw-hill.com
