Dr. Grammar - Online Documentation Resources

If you don't own a great dictionary, such as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition, the following online dictionaries will prove helpful. However, you should consider adding the best dictionary you can afford to your writer's bookshelf.

Because academic writing requires the clear documentation of facts, ideas, quotations, summaries, and paraphrases, all academic writers need to be familiar with the system of documentation called for by their discipline. The two most frequently used formats are MLA, used in English and the humanities, and APA, used in Education, social sciences, and psychology. The following list of online resources will begin with two overview sites followed by sites for MLA, APA, and COS, a new system the for documenting electronic material in both MLA and APA.

A final section will list the style manuals used in a variety of disciplines. The complexities and variations of documentation styles are so numerous that I will refer most questioners to this page and suggest that they download the appropriate system for future reference or purchase the stylebook. All sites provide information, explanation, and examples of parenthetical documentation, works cited and bibliographic pages, and socumentation of internet sources.


DOCUMENTING ONLINE SOURCES?

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OVERVIEW SITES

A Research Guide for Students by I.Lee
This site deserves to be bookmarked by every student writer. I. Lee says that "The goal of this site is to provide all the necessary tools for students to conduct research and to present their findings." And all the tools are here. Scroll through the home page to see what's available.

Karla's Guide to Citation Style Guides

Online! A Reference Guide to Citing Internet Sources (MLA & APA)

Information and Research in the Electronic Age: An Online Handbook (Hacker)


MLA SITES

MLA Style (Purdue Online Writing Lab)

The English Pages Citation Guide (Janice Walker)

MLA Style (Diana Hacker)


APA SITES

APA Style (Purdue Online Writing Lab)

APA Style (Diana Hacker)

COS (COLUMBIA ONLINE STYLE) FOR MLA & APA

Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association