Below you'll find some of the most commonly used style guides, basic information about each, and some links to help you learn how to master them.
As of 2023, the major organizations that set standards for citations have not yet agreed on styles and formats for citing and quoting information created by generative artificial intelligence (including but not limited to ChatGPT). Until these standards are set, please consult with your professor about whether you may use AI for any part of an assignment and, if so, how to cite or quote it properly.
Although the format and rules are not fully complete, best practices will probably require:
Basic Format:
AI Tool. (YYYY, Month DD of query). “Text of your query.” Generated using [AI Company]. [URL]
Example:
Chat-GPT-3. (2023, November 07). “Convert my results table of Volts per Amperes to Milliohms.” Generated using OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/
IEEE is a format used for several engineering fields, within and beyond electrical. It is formatted to make citations compact by minimizing extraneous words. IEEE utilizes a regulated list of abbreviations for all IEEE journals, conferences, organization acronyms (IEEE Editorial Manual Guide for Authors pp. 57-71), standardized abbreviation conventions for common words (like "international" as "Int." and "science" as "Sci."), and for all months of the year.
For more information on using and understanding the IEEE style guide, check out PurdueOWL's section on IEEE, or the (much more dense) resources provided by IEEE themselves, including the full IEEE Editorial Manual Guide for Authors, the IEEE Reference Guide, the IEEE Mathematics Guide, or the abbreviated IEEE How to Cite References Guidelines.
Basic Format:
Author's name [#] mid-sentence...
...statement and sentence that cites research [#].
Several citations [#, #, #] in a sentence....
Examples:
Scholtz [2] has argued. . . .
...for example, see [7].
Several recent studies [3, 4, 15, 22] have suggested that. . . .
Basic Format:
First Initial. Middle Initial. Author Last Name, “Name of paper,” Abbrev. Title of Periodical, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx-xxx, Abbrev. Month, year, doi: 10.XXX/XXX.
Example (for an article):
D. V. Lindberg and H. K. H. Lee, “Optimization under constraints by applying an asymmetric entropy measure,” J. Comput. Graph. Statist., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 379–393, Jun. 2015, doi: 10.1080/10618600.2014.901225.
ASCE is the format used for materials published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. This includes journals from subfields such as Cold Regions Engineering, Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste, and Leadership and Management in Engineering. For more information on using and understanding the ASCE style guide, check out the resources provided by ASCE themselves, including their ASCE Guide for Authors.
ASCE uses the author-date method for in-text References, whereby the citation reads as the last names of the authors, then the year (e.g., Smith 2004, or Smith and Jones 2004). A References section must be included that lists all references alphabetically by last name of the first author. References must be published works only. Exceptions to this rule are theses, dissertations, and “forthcoming” articles, all of which are allowed in the References list. References cited in text that are not found in the References list will be deleted but queried by the copyeditor. Likewise, all references included in the References section must be cited in the text.
Basic Format:
(Author’s last name Year) mid-sentence...
...statement and sentence that cites research (Author’s name Year). Several citations (Author’s name Year, Author’s name Year) in a sentence....
Example (for an article):
(Smith and Jones 2004)
Basic Format:
Author Last Name, First Initial, Middle Initial. Year. “Article Title.” Journal Title Abbrv., Volume Number, (Issue Number), Page Number-Page Number. https://doi.org/[DOI]
Examples:
Beskos, D. E. 1987. “Boundary element methods in dynamic analysis.” Appl. Mech. Rev., 40 (1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.3149529.
The 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style contains detailed guidance on what should be included in a reference and how references should be styled and formatted. Sample references to both books and journals, in print and online, include formats for sometimes complex citations that include non-English words and phrases, names of organisms, discontinuous pagination, journals without volume or issue numbers, a special department of a journal, discussants, online comments, special collections, package inserts, patents, conference proceedings, personal communications, material submitted but not yet accepted or published, and transcripts. Many examples of how to cite social media and other electronic resources, including podcasts, apps and interactive games, preprints, databases, and data repositories, are included. New recommendations: a DOI should be included for journal references if available, and it is no longer necessary to include the publisher’s location in references to books.
Basic Format:
Each reference should be cited in the text using superscript arabic numerals. These superscript numbers should be outside periods and commas but inside colons and semicolons. Multiple references may be cited in the same instance.
Examples:
As Smith et al have reported,1-3,5
Smith et al reported1-3,5:
Basic Format:
Author Last name First Initial Middle Initial. Title in sentence case. Abbreviated Journal Title in Title Case. Year;volume(Issue#):PP-PP. doi: ##
Example (for an article):
Wheeler T, Watkins PJ. Cardiac denervation in diabetes. BMJ. 1973;4:584-586.
Reference linking and citation counts are facilitated by use of these standard reference formats. Information can be found on ACM's own website, or By using your BibTeX (.bib) file with the appropriate .bst file (ACM Reference Format) your references should require minimum editing. ACM's preference is for full names and not initials or abbreviations.
Due to the born-digital nature of most ACM materials, the association offers special information for properly citing in BibTeX. These common formats can also be found on BibTex formatting from ACM's online style guide.
Basic Format:
For parenthetical citations we enclose the number of the reference, thus: [1]. Sequential parenthetical citations are enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas, thus [1, 2]. When a citation is part of a sentence, the name of the author is NOT enclosed in brackets, but the year is: "So we see that Burando et al. [1999]..."
Basic Format:
[#] First Name Last Name and First Name Last Name. Year. Article title. Journal Title Vol#, Issue# (Mon. Year), Page-page. https://doi.org/[DOI]
Example (for an article):
[1] Patricia S. Abril and Robert Plant. 2007. The patent holder's dilemma: Buy, sell, or troll? Commun. ACM 50, 1 (Jan. 2007), 36-44. https://doi.org/10.1145/1188913.1188915
For comprehensive information, lessons, and FAQs we always recommend checking out Purdue OWL:
