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The major formatting styles used at USC are: APA, Harvard (Qld) and Vancouver.
You may need to edit references to make them come out correctly at the end. Always check each reference in your collection carefully to see that every piece of information is in the correct place. Never trust that a database export has perfectly placed all the data you need to get a good reference. Be especially careful of capitalization, proper names, and dates. Always double check automated formatting against the rules and examples provided in style manuals and guides. Good referencing is one of the signs of good scholarship! A good reference also makes sure that you've included all the important information about a source, so that your reader can tell the difference between, for instance, two papers by the same author in the same year, or two books by the same title. When you know what to look for, it's easy to tell a journal article from a book chapter from a conference paper. A citation/reference organizes the individual elements (author, year, book title etc.) of a citation into a consistent form.