One Less Barrier to Student Success
The Simplified Citation Style (SCS) emphasizes accessibility, brevity, consistency, durability, and clarity. It is freely available and licensed under Creative Commons for easy sharing and adaptation.
The style is designed to be used across academic disciplines and aims to reduce barriers to research, citation, and student success. These barriers disproportionately affect:
- First-generation college students
- Dyslexic and neurodiverse students
- Multilingual learners
- Faculty & librarians who must support citation instruction
The SCS prioritizes the information needed to:
- Credit the author or creator
- Locate the source
- Evaluate the source
Basic Format
A SCS citation includes four core elements:
- Author or Creator
- Year
- Title
- Larger Entity
LastName, First. Year. Title. Larger Entity.
Pooley, Claire. 2024. How to Age Disgracefully. Pamela Dorman Books.
Larger Entity
Larger entities include publishers, journals, organizations, and websites.
Correct Format
SCS Citations are considered “correct” if it 1) credit the author or creator and 2) provide enough information to locate and begin evaluating a source. The examples in this guide illustrate formatting options, not formatting requirements.
Uncommon or Obscure Sources
For less common sources (beyond books and journal articles), it’s helpful to include additional information between the Title and Larger Entity sections to help readers recognize the source.
Example: No Author. No Date. The APA After Creating and Mandating Their Writing Style (Image). MakeAMeme.org.
Creators
For creators who are not authors (example: producers, illustrators, or chapter authors), it’s helpful to add their role in parenthesis after their name.
Example: Balle, Solvej. Barbara J. Haveland (Translator). 2024. On the Calculation of Volume. Volume I. New Directions.
In-Text Citations
The Simplified Citation Style format supports both Author-Date and Footnote styles.
Author-Date
| Source Type | In-Text Examples |
|---|---|
| Signal phrase (author quoted in sentence) | Seed says of Dracula “in short, he is a combination of Gothic villain, Regency rake, and monster” (1985). |
| Signal phrase (author paraphrased in sentence) | Seed believes that Dracula is a mix of scoundrel, ogre, and devilish man (1985). |
| Author included at end of sentence | Dracula, “…is a combination of Gothic villain, Regency rake, and monster” (Seed 1985). |
| Corresponding Bibliographic Citation | Seed, David. 1985. The Narrative Method of Dracula. Nineteenth-Century Fiction. |
Footnote Style
• Shortened notes are not used to maintain consistency.
• Endnotes are avoided; footnotes are more accessible for readers with working memory disabilities.
• Superscript numbers appear after the paraphrase or quotation. Example: Sentence.1
• Multiple superscript numbers are separated with a comma. Example: Sentence.1,2,3
| Source Type | In-Text Citation Example |
|---|---|
| Signal Phrase (author quoted in sentence) | Seed says of Dracula, “in short, he is a combination of Gothic villain, Regency rake, and monster.”1 |
| Signal Phrase (author paraphrased in sentence) | Seed believes that Dracula is a mix of scoundrel, ogre, and devilish man.1 |
| Author not included in sentence | Dracula, “…is a combination of Gothic villain, Regency rake, and monster.”1 |
| Corresponding Footnote | Seed, David. 1985. The Narrative Method of Dracula. Nineteenth-Century Fiction. |
Bibliographic Citations
Footnote Format:
Organized by their superscript number, that is, the order they appear.
Add the corresponding superscript number to the examples below.
Example: 1. Pooley, Claire. 2024. How to Age Disgracefully. Pamela Dorman Books.
Author-Date Format:
Bibliographic citations are listed in alphabetical format.
| Source Type | Bibliographic Citation Examples |
|---|---|
| Book | LastName, First. Year. Title. Publisher Pooley, Claire. 2024. How to Age Disgracefully. Pamela Dorman Books. |
| Edited Book | LastName, First (Editor). Year. Title. Publisher. Stern, Jessica (Editor). 2020. Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science. Columbia University Press. |
| Book Chapter | LastName, First (Chapter Author). Year. Title. Chapter. Book Title. Publisher. Hejnol, Andreas. Mark Q. Martindale. The Mouth, The Anus, and The Blastoppre–Open Questions About Questionable Openings (Chapter). Animal Evolution: Genomes, Fossils, and Trees. Oxford University Press. |
| Journal Article | LastName, First. Year. Title. Journal. Wang, Xin. Borja L Holgado. Vijay Ramaswamy. Stephen Mack. Kory Zayne. Marc Remke. Xiaochong Wu. Livia Garzia. Craig Daniels. Anna Marie Kenney. 2018. miR miR on the wall, who’s the most malignant medulloblastoma miR of them all?. Neuro-Oncology. |
| Newspaper Article | LastName, First. Year. Title. Newspaper. QMI Agency. 2012. Missing Woman Unwittingly Joins Search Party Looking for Herself. Toronto Sun. |
| Video or Movie | Creator/Director. Year. Video title (Video). Platform or Producer. City of Marion Libraries. Not Mr Darcy but Denise Delivering Your Hold (Video). Facebook. Ellis, David R. 2006. Snakes on a Plane (Video). Mutual Film Company. |
| Webpage | LastName, First. Year. Title. Larger Entity. No Author. No Date. The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Annals of Improbable Research. |
Author-Date Format for Less Common Sources
| Source Type | |
|---|---|
| Blog Post | Lastname, First. Year. Title. Larger Entity. |
| Dictionary Definition | LastName, First. Year. Definition. Dictionary Title. No Author. 1997. Academese. Merriam-Webster Webster Dictionary. |
| Doctoral, Master’s or Bachelor’s Study | LastName, First. Year. Title. [Doctoral/Master’s/Bachelor’s] Study. University. Patterson, Rachael. 2012. The Possibility of Unicorns: Kripke v Dummett. Undergraduate Study. King’s College London. |
| Wikipedia or Encyclopedia | LastName, First. Year. Entry. Encyclopedia Title. No Author. Plain Language. Wikipedia. |
| Government Document | LastName, First. Year. Title. Government Agency. Reichelt, Herb. Jack Elrod (Illustrator). 1997. Mark Trail Tells the Story of a Fish in Trouble. United States Fish and Wildlife Service. |
| Multivolume Work | LastName, First. Year. Title. Volume #. Publisher. Balle, Solvej. Barbara J. Haveland (Translator). 2024. On the Calculation of Volume. Volume I. New Directions. |
| Magazine Article | LastName, First. Date. Title. Magazine. |
| Opinion or Letter to the Editor | LastName, First. Year. Title (Letter to the Editor). Journal/Newspaper. Torres-Company, Victor. 2017. One Ring to Multiplex Them All (Letter to the Editor). Nature. |
| Poem | LastName, First. Year. Title. Book. Nash, Ogden. 1949. The People Upstairs. The Bad Parents’ Garden of Verse. |
| Poster Presentation | LastName, First. Year. Title. Name of the Conference. Bennett, Craig M. Abigail A. Baird. Michael B. Miller. George L. Wolford. 2009. Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument for Multiple Comparisons. Human Brain Mapping Conference. |
| Image | LastName, First. Year. Title. Larger Entity. No Author. No Date. The APA After Creating and Mandating Their Writing Style (Image). MakeAMeme.org. |
Notes on the SCS
Abbreviation
Abbreviations are avoided.
Artificial Intelligence
When using AI, transparency is key.
Example: Written by Susan Whitehead with editing assistance from CoPilot.
Author–Format
- The first author’s name is inverted for indexing (Lastname, First). Additional names remain in standard format and are separated by periods.
- Authors are ordered as listed in the source.
- Names should appear as written in the work, including accents and initials.
| Number of Authors | Bibliographic Citation Examples |
|---|---|
| 1 Author | Doe, John. |
| 2 Authors | Doe, John. Jane Doe. |
| 3 Authors | Doe, John. Jane Doe. Little Doe. |
| 5+ Authors | Option 1: list all authors Option 2: use “and others.” Doe, John. Jane Doe. Little Doe. Littlest Doe. And others. |
Author–No Author
Write “No Author.”
Example: No Author. No Date. The APA After Creating and Mandating Their Writing Style (Image). MakeAMeme.org.
Author–Two Works by the Same Author
Order the citations by date. If the dates are the same, order by title.
Author–Editors, Illustrators, and Directors
List their full, unabbreviated role in parentheses.
Example: Grossman, David. Jessica Cohen (Translator). 2014. A Horse Walks into a Bar. Knopf.
Author–Organization as Author
Write “No Author.” The organization remains listed as the Larger Entity.
Citation Bits
SCS omits citation bits–including volume, issue, DOI, location, and page numbers–as this information can be readily found online using search for the main title in quotation marks (example: “The Adventures of Julia and Robbie” finds that obscure government source[AM1] ).
Quotations can be found online using a phrase search (placing quotation marks around the quotation or part of a sentence.)
If a source cannot be located, your friendly librarians and instructors are happy to show you how to hunt down sources.
Date
- If the publication date is unknown, write “No Date.”
- Day and month are not needed as that information can be found if needed.
Database Name
- See citation bits entry.
DOI
- See citation bits entry.
Editions
- Are not necessary as this information can be determined from the publication date.
Issue Numbers
- See citation bits entry.
Journal Volume
- See citation bits entry.
Links
- Links to online sources are optional.
- Links are convenient when they work. However, they are frequently misformatted or become broken as websites change.
- Use descriptive links for accessibility.
Page Number
- See citation bits entry.
Print & Online Sources
Print & online sources are treated without distinction.
Republished Book
Cite the specific book you used.
Credit
Creative Commons licensed. Please share. CC BY-SA-NC 4.0.
Written by Susan Whitehead with editing assistance from CoPilot.