What is the Son of Citation Machine?

The Son of Citation Machine is a fast and easy way to obtain correct style citation formatting for footnotes, bibliographies, end notes etc. Learning how to use the Son of Citation Machine is easy and simply involves going to citationmachine.net website and entering in the author, title, publication date, publisher and page number in the appropriate style and format. Citations are used to properly document information, and credit authors and publishers from which 'fair use content' is used in your writing.

To illustrate how to use the Son of Citation Machine, suppose you are writing an accounting report for a financial accounting class and have an online reference you want to cite in your paper to avoid plagiarism. First find out what style you need to use from your course description, or professor. The styles available at the sons of citation website include APA, MLA , Turabian and Chicago. Generally, APA and MLA are used for specific subjects such as Pyschology and Literature respectively, whereas Turabian can be used with multiple subjects.

• MLA: Modern Language Association: Humanities ex. Literature
• APA: American Psychological Association: Social science ex. Psychology
• Turabian: Multi-purpose
• Chicago: Chicago Manual of Style

After you know what style is expected, the next step in knowing how to use the Son of Citation Machine is to gather the required information including the date of publication, page number, author(s), title, publisher and go to the son of citation machine. Let's say your instructor prefers Turabian style; in such case click on 'Turabian'. After this figure out what kind of publication it is. The information you want to use is from an article from the internet which means you would click on 'Non-Print Article from online database'. The publication choices are as follows:

i) Print: Book, magazine or journal
ii) Non-Print: Webpage, online posting, or online article

The next step in the Son of Citation Machine will be the 'Article from online database' entry form. Let's say your article is written by John E. Jacksonian, and is called, 'An introduction to financial accounting'. The publisher vendor is Super finance websites, but the individual website is called http://www.financial accounting.com. Since the article was not found in a database you leave that blank and add the date of publication which was February 1, 2010 which is also the online publication date. After entering in all this information you will see the following format.

Jacksonian, John E. "An introduction to financial accounting." http://www.financial accounting.com (2010): 1-3. Super Finance Websites. 01/02/2010

The Son of Citation Machine makes finding out how to cite sources in specific styles and formats a cinch. It saves time by not having to look up style manuals such as the APA style guide, and then flipping through pages to find the right type of reference, looking at the example etc. All you have to do is know what you are citing and what style you need and the sons of citation machine does the rest. The Son of Citation website is managed by David Warlick who also has a blog called 'Citation Machine Blog' linked to the site in which he publishes information on writing styles, developments and rules.

It may be helpful to note that citations requirements can vary depending on where you are citing the material. For example, citing an online source online is different from citing an online source in print and can vary between writing styles. In light of this, and as noted on the Son of Citation Machine, the citations are standard, meaning they follow traditional writing styles. The following sources used as references for this article are cited using the APA, not for academic research, web page citation option available at the son of citation website.

Sources:

(1 )The Landmark Project. , David Warlick . (1975, January 2010). Citation machine™. Retrieved from http://citationmachine.net

(2) Purdue University 'Purdue Online Writing Lab' Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/584/01/