When you are writing your academic paper, you have to cite the sources used in your research

for the reason not only to avoid plagiarism but also

to give credit to the authors of articles from whom you have referred ideas. 

It is not a problem to write a few of citations and references manually.

However when they are in dozens number, it becomes time-consuming work because

you have to find the information for writing the citations and references by yourself

and  check its format. 

Here, I would like to recommend some useful citation tips and software: 

=>Microsoft Word

=>Mendeley

Citation tips in Microsoft Word

1. On the tab of References, click the arrow on Style to choose the style you want to

use to write your citations and references.

2. To add new source of citation and reference,

click the arrow on Insert Citation and choose Add New Source.

3. Click the Type of Source, choose the type of source you want to write citation and reference.

For example, you might cite the source from journal, book, website, etc.

4. Next, begin to fill the information of source.

Image above shows the example of filling the information of journal. 

4. Place cursor on the end of the sentences or phrase you want to cite,

then click Insert Citation to choose the citation you want.

5. Click the arrow on Bibliography to write the references list or bibliography of the sources used.

6. Click Manage Source to open Source Manager.

In Source Manager, Master List display the sources used in previous document and current document, 

while the Current List display the source created in current document.

7. Select the source in Master List and click Copy to enable reuse of  in current document.    

8. Besides, you able to delete, edit and add new source in Source Manager.

Automatic create citations and references in Mendeley

If there  are dozens number of sources, 

Mendeley will be a better tool to help you write citations and references instead of MS Word.

1. Download Mendeley Desktop from https://www.mendeley.com/downloads, then install it in your desktop.

2. Yes, you have to register a Mendeley account,

hence you can keep track of the sources you have used and

add on the other new sources even though you are the device other than your owns. 

3. To enable the use of Mendeley in MS Word, you have to install MS Word plugin.

Click tab of Tools and select Install MS Word Plugin.

4. Click the arrow on Add to insert the sources you want to cite your work into Mendeley Desktop. 

5. Place cursor on the place you want to cite.

Then, click Insert Citations and enter the author, title or year to find the source you want to cite.  

6. After, the creation of citations on paragraph,

click on the place you want to build references list,

click Insert Bibliography to insert the references based on the citation created just now.

7. Other than the plugin in MS Word,

you can add Mendeley Importer as an extension on your browser.

Hence, you can save references to Mendeley from browser easily.

8. After that, you have to synchronize the sources in Mendeley Importer with Mendeley Desktop.

==Thank you!==

==Hope my tips here can help you to write citations and references more easily.==