What style guide should I use for my manuscript?
I am a humanities Ph.D. student. I am drafting my first manuscript for publication. What style guide should I follow?
The referencing style guides mostly used in Humanities writing are the Chicago Manual of Style, the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). Out of these, MLA is the most commonly used for writing papers and citing sources in this field. Over the years, the MLA style has been updated to reflect changes in the world of writing in the field of humanities. To keep up with these changes, the MLA style was updated in 2016. This new update represents the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook, which is accompanied by a resource called the MLA style center, available on the MLA official website. Academic researchers and students can use these resources to learn about the MLA style and get guidance on how to use it properly when writing. Although MLA, APA and Chicago Manual of Style are all style guides applicable for Humanities, they have slight changes. To know more about these style guides and the minute differences in them, read our blog article. However, you will have to check the author guidelines of the journal you would be submitting your manuscript to for their preferred style.
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