InfoGuides: Computer Science: Write & Cite

Citation & Writing Resources

The Mason Writing Center offers free writing support to Mason students, faculty, and staff. Accomplished graduate and undergraduate students provide our consulting services and deliver our workshops. They work with writers through all stages of the writing process from brainstorming and organizing to revising and polishing. Sessions are offered in person and online.

Schedule a Writing Center appointment
Use the easy online scheduler to make an appointment or upload your draft.
Mason Writing Center workshops
Five to six workshops are offered to the George Mason University community each term on topics ranging from getting started on a draft to personal statements for graduate school applications.

zotero written word logo with a red z letter

Zotero
Use Zotero to generate accurate citations and quick bibliographies. It's a free software developed here at George Mason University and now used globally!

Do you need a specialized citation style beyond APA, Chicago, or MLA? Check out Zotero's Style Repository for other formats.

Mason Libraries provides workshops to get you started using Zotero. Check the workshop calendar for times and locations.

Mendeley citation tool logo in black with white letters

Mendeley
Use Mendeley to generate accurate citations and quick bibliographies. This software has a limited free edition or comes with features with a subscription through Elsevier.

Do you need a specialized citation style beyond APA, Chicago, or MLA? Check out Mendeley's Style Repository for other formats.

The University Libraries also provide workshops to get you started using Mendeley. Check the workshop calendar for times and locations.

Online Writing Lab (OWL), Purdue University
Find APA and MLA style and citation resources at the OWL from Purdue.

LinkedIn Learning This link opens in a new window
Formerly Lynda Online Training. Provides Mason faculty, students and staff with free, unlimited online access to tutorials and courses in hundreds of subject areas, including office productivity; audio, video, and web software; as well as business and job skills. New courses are added every week. Log in with your Mason NetID username and password. LinkedIn Learning is available 24/7 from your computer, tablet or mobile device, and is supported jointly by Mason's ITS Learning Support Services and the University Libraries.

IEEE Style Basics

IEEE Citation Guide for Different Resources
This citation guide from the Naval Postgraduate School library has examples of citations of many different kinds of resources.
IEEE Journal Titles and Reference Abbreviations
This list provides abbreviated forms of journal names and other common words for use in references to IEEE periodicals.
IEEE Style Overivew (Purdue OWL)
Use this online source to get an overview ot IEEE paper and citation style (Purdue Univ.)

Preparation of IEEE Style Papers--Word Transactions Template (2017)
Use this Word template to write your research paper in IEEE style.

IEEE Editorial Style Manual
This IEEE style manual provides style and citation guidelines, journal title abbreviations and more for IEEE Journals, Transactions and Letters.
Journal Title Abbreviations (Web of Science)
This list contains title abbreviations for over 10,000 journals.

Need some help with your IEEE paper and Citations? Take a look at this video series and learn how easy it is to do!

LaTeX & BibTeX

LaTeX & BibTeX

Check out these resources to help you work with LaTeX and create bibliographies with BibTeX.

LaTeX Resources
This LaTeX guide highlights resources to help you learn about LaTeX and create documents using it. It is especially helpful with papers containing mathematical expressions.
How do I create bibliographies in LaTeX?
This page from MIT's IST Knoweldge Base provides directions for 2 ways to create bibliographies in LaTeX.
BibTeX
"The BibTeX program sorts and writes a document's bibliography (.bbl) using style files (.bst) and formatting-independent (in principle) bibliography databases (.bib). It works with LaTeX, plain TeX, and other TeX variants. BibTeX is currently distributed through TeX Live and other software collections."
Citation Management Tools: LaTeX & BibTeX
This guide from MIT discusses LaTeX. It also provides information on using standard citation managers (Zotero or Mendeley) and specialty citation managers for LaTeX (Jabref ) to manage reference and create a bibliography.

APA Citation Style Basics

APA Online Resources

The Basics of APA Style (7th ed.)
Tutorial Video from apastyle.org
The OWL APA Formatting & Style Guide
Learn how to format your paper in APA style and create your in-text citations and list of references. (Purdue University)
APA Style: References Guide
This page from the creators of APA style provides guidelines and tips on creating APA references.
Creating References Using 7th edition APA Style., 2020
Tutorial Video from apastyle.org. Use link below to go directly to the tutorial.
How to Cite a Data Set in APA Style
This blog post can help you figure out how to cite the data sets you used.