Citations feel hard and complicated, I know. All those pesky, pedantic arguments about whether to use a comma or period, and where, or whether to use italics or quotation marks, or how to list the author& #39;s name.

But it doesn& #39;t have to be that way. You can make citations easy.

Just focus on capturing four things: 1) author/creator of the work, 2) the title of the work, 3) the date of the work, and 4) where you found the work. That& #39;s the bare minimum, and will make your editor& #39;s life (and yours!) so much easier.

To the extent you can, capture *all* of the detail here, even if it feels excessive. Paper has 35 authors? Great! Copy & paste that. Work has been revised and published six times? Copy & paste that.

It& #39;s easier (and cheaper) to delete excess than find missing info.

And if you give me a ton of citation detail that& #39;s correct but out of order I have a *much* easier time fixing that than finding the source for "Smith et al., 2015, p. 3." (Especially when that was p. 3 of your copy, which was page 297 in the journal.)

If it turns out you don& #39;t need the citation, we can delete it. But if you *do* need it, future you will thank past you for not worrying about the formatting and just copying the core info: author, title, date, source.

No one& #39;s going to judge you if you don& #39;t know the more arcane points of formatting a database citation in APA or a website in Chicago. We aren& #39;t going to judge you. We just want to help. We& #39;ve got your back.

Author, title, date, source. Easy! Your editor can take it from there.

In the interest of eating my own porridge, this phrasing is heavily influenced by the way APA words the same advice, since that& #39;s what I& #39;m working in right now. But the advice is much the same from all style manuals. https://twitter.com/DeAnnaBurghart/status/1330135959162265601">https://twitter.com/DeAnnaBur...