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Examples of citation styles

Four popular citation styles are illustrated:

• APA (check this table for APA 6th citations examples and outputstyle)
• Chicago
• Harvard
• Numbered

The example shows the same text, with the same citations, but in a different style.

The references in the example contain different document types:

1. journal article
2. website
3. book

The example was made using EndNote software in combination with MS Word. Reformatting to a different style then only takes a few clicks.

APA Style

APA (American Psychological Association) style is more than a citation style. It also covers style rules about for example the title page and the sections of a scientific paper.  

APA uses Harvard-style referencing but unlike Harvard, does not capitalise authors' names (contracts with Harvard style, below). It has better support for online resources such as web pages.

Chicago Style

Chicago Manual of Style is very popular in all sciences. It is very flexible.

Notice that Chicago style uses the author's first name instead of only their initials!

Harvard style

Harvard style or Harvard referencing is one of the preferred styles.

Harvard style gives the author's name entirely in capital letters, which may look a bit old fashioned.

Numbered Style

In Numbered Style, numbers are used as placeholders for the citation information. The reference list is then ordered according to where the citation appears in the text, not alphabetically, as in the other styles.

Nature magazine uses a numbered style. The numbers can be put in square brackets, like in the example, or can be used as superscript.