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RLST 3820 / JWST 3820 Dreams: Divination, Healing, & Prophecy (Lillie)

Writing & Citing Resources

banner providing the location and following contact information for CU Boulder's Writing Center: The Writing Center, Norlin Library Norlin Commons, Room E111, 317 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, phone number: (303) 735 6906, email address: wrtghelp@colorado.edu

 

The CU Boulder Writing Center offers writers from across disciplines and skill levels the opportunity to work one-on-one with professionally trained writing consultants, helping writers at all stages of the writing process from planning through revision.

 

This guide walks you through how to cite according to different citation styles and provides information about citation style manuals to which you can refer.

 

This website provides writing tips and tells you how to cite in APA or MLA, two of the most commonly used citation styles in academia.

 

U.S. American Style Punctuation

Please remember to use U.S. American Style Punctuation in your assignments. British and U.S. American Style Punctuation have very different rules when it comes to punctuation and quotation marks, so please be consistent with the American Style throughout your work. 

American Style Punctuation uses double quotation marks around quotes "" and typically the punctuation goes inside of the quotation marks. For example: 

  • "Literary themes, symbols, and motifs have been used throughout history," according to Dr. Jacobsen, but literary motifs especially "flourished in the post-war period" (244). 
     
  • Note how the sentence punctuation, in this case, the commas, go inside the quotation marks even if the punctuation isn't a part of the original quotation. So commas and periods that are a part of your overall sentence structure, even if it isn't a part of the original quotation, generally go inside the quotation marks. 
  • Also note that the period denoting the end of the sentence goes outside of the MLA in-text citation. In addition, the author's last name is omitted in the in-text citation since the author's last name is mentioned in the sentence itself. 
  • All other punctuation marks other than periods and commas, such as semicolons, are placed outside the quotation marks unless they are a part of the original quotation.
  • For an informative guide on U.S. American Style Punctuation with illustrative examples, please check: The Punctuation Guide. 
  • Please see also their very helpful page on Quotation Marks.