Introduction to Music Research

The Chicago Manual of Style is the preeminent citation style used in the humanities, especially for music. A simplified version by Kate Turabian is geared toward students. APA and MLA are two other popular styles for academic writing. The important thing is to be complete and clear, and to use one style consistently throughout your work. Plugging a URL into a citation machine is a great convenience, but the result must be proofread. Pasting a reference from another author's bibliography may also require some polishing to make it match your other citations.

Please see our citation style guide for Chicago/Turabian for detailed examples.

Key terminology:

• Author-Date system -- Sources are cited within the text in parentheses with the last name of the author and publication date.
• Notes and Bibliography (NB) system -- Sources are cited as sequentially-numbered footnotes, with a corresponding superscript number in the text.
• In-text citations -- Parenthetical references to the source within the main text body.
• Footnotes -- Numbered citations below the main body of text.
• Bibliographies / Reference lists -- This is the list, in alphabetical order, at the end of your paper of all of the sources to which have made specific references. The title "Bibliography" is used in the NB system, "References" in the Author-Date system.

Zotero -- "Zotero is a free, open-source research tool that helps you collect, organize, and analyze research and share it in a variety of ways"

Purdue Owl -- This is a wonderful reference guide for using the Chicago Manual of Style