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CitationZ

Citation Checklist for Students

Updated September 2026

Run this in the half hour before submission — it catches the citation errors that actually cost points, in the order graders notice them. Most items take seconds to verify.

The match (do this first)

  1. Every in-text citation has a reference entry starting with the same word.
  2. Every reference entry is cited at least once in the text (unless your assignment wants a true bibliography).
  3. Names and years are consistent everywhere — no (Alvarez, 2024) in one paragraph and (Alvarez, 2023) in another for the same source.

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Citation style

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition (2020). The 7th dropped the publisher location and the "Retrieved from" prefix that the 6th required.

The reference list

  1. Correct title for the style: References (APA/IEEE), Works Cited (MLA), Bibliography (Chicago), Reference List (Harvard) — centered, new page.
  2. Correct order: alphabetical (letter by letter) — or citation order for IEEE.
  3. Hanging indents on every entry; double spacing; no extra blank lines.
  4. Italics on containers (journal names, book titles), not on article titles.
  5. Casing matches the style: sentence case (APA) vs Title Case (MLA/Chicago).
  6. DOIs/URLs resolve, formatted per style, no trailing periods after links.

Quotes and paraphrases

  1. Every direct quote has quotation marks and a locator (page, paragraph, or timestamp).
  2. Quotes over the threshold (40 words APA / 4 lines MLA) are block-formatted, with the citation after the final period.
  3. Paraphrases are genuinely your wording — and still cited.
  4. Statistics, data, and images all have sources.

The integrity pass

Anything broken? Each fix is fast: regenerate the citation here, or rebuild the whole list in the Bibliography Builder and export it correctly formatted. For the why behind each item: Common Citation Mistakes.

  1. No sources cited that you didn't read — use (as cited in …) for secondhand material.
  2. The version cited is the version read (preprint vs published, edition years).
  3. Specific pages cited, not homepages; original studies cited, not summaries of them.

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Frequently asked questions

How long does a proper citation check take?
For a typical 8–12 source paper: 15–25 minutes manually, under 10 if your citations were generated rather than hand-typed (the formatting items pre-pass).
What do graders check first?
The in-text/reference match and the list's visual formatting (title, order, indents) — both visible in seconds. That's why they're the top of this checklist.
Should I check citations before or after final proofreading?
After content is frozen — editing afterward can orphan citations (deleting a paragraph but not its source's entry, or vice versa).
Does this checklist work for every style?
Yes — the structure (match → list → quotes → integrity) is universal; only the per-style details (title, casing, in-text form) vary, and the items name each variant.

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