What citations look like is determined by the citation styles. Individual elements of the citation remain the same, while the formal appearance of the bibliographic citation differs. Citation styles are based on the traditions of the given field and differ slightly. There are a large number of citation styles, each institution or publisher uses the style of their choice. Some citation styles have their own manuals and standards, some are described only in general. Professional publishers and periodicals use their own citation style in their texts. When you publish in a professional periodical or write a student work, it is always necessary to find out what citation style the institution uses.

What do citation styles determine?

• What data are included in the citation (author, title, source document, etc.) and in what way (number of authors, order of first and last name, etc.);

• Order of such data;

• How to separate individual data from each other;

• What form of writing individual data to use (italics, capital letters, etc.);

• How the source document should be unambiguously identified (for articles - the title of the journal; for the conference paper – conference proceedings, etc.), some citation styles shorten the titles of the journals;

• How and what referencing methods should be used;

• How the bibliography should be organized.

Common elements for all citation styles

• Division into literal quotation and paraphrase, in each case the source must be cited;

• Each source mentioned in the text must be listed in the bibliography and, conversely, the bibliography can only include sources used in the text (incl. tables, appendices, footnotes).

An overview of important citation styles

Sample bibliographic citations according to various styles used in the humanities

Citation styles used at FSV UK

At FSV UK, according to the Dean’s Measure it is recommended to use the style of the ČSN ISO 690 Standard for citation; except for IMS, most institutes use this standard for student works. IMS then prescribes a standard based on the Chicago Manual of Style for student works, which it adjusts for the Czech language (for detailed instructions see the Notice of the director of the institute no. 21/20). Among other things, you may encounter the requirement for APA Style. We will take a closer look at ISO 690, APA Style and Chicago Style, and will look at what it means to cite according to Harvard.