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[galactic_hedgehog]

Some high school graduates from here have never been taught a citation style. I thought it was a required part of a high school education!

Really?  I don't think I was ever taught one, at least a specific style.  We were taught how to cite and make a bibliography, but there was no indication that we were using a specific style.

[ursula]

Some high school graduates from here have never been taught a citation style. I thought it was a required part of a high school education!

Really?  I don't think I was ever taught one, at least a specific style.  We were taught how to cite and make a bibliography, but there was no indication that we were using a specific style.

In my last year of high school (this was in the eighties), our English teacher got the essay writing guides from a variety of disciplines at the nearest university, took us through them all, and had us practise writing essays until we were all able to do every citation style.  This was the university prep. level class, and he was going to prep us, damn it!

[ls410]

I don't remember ever learning a specific style either in high school.  I do remember my mother pulling out her style book (Chicago I think based on how big it was) and teaching me how to reference books and encylopedias for my 5th grade report on the Olympics.  My mom was an elementary school teacher.  Now I teach a lot of elementary education majors and they are always the ones who plagiarize.  Times have changed.

[polly_mer]

I don't remember ever learning a specific style either in high school.  I do remember my mother pulling out her style book (Chicago I think based on how big it was) and teaching me how to reference books and encylopedias for my 5th grade report on the Olympics.  My mom was an elementary school teacher.  Now I teach a lot of elementary education majors and they are always the ones who plagiarize.  Times have changed.

I, too, teach elementary education majors.  On the last on-line quiz, most of them copied a paragraph word-for-word out of the book in spite of the instructions at the top that read, "All answers must be in your own words".  A few had obviously attempted to paraphrase and failed miserably because I don't deem mere change of verb tense and rearranging the order of the words as adequate paraphrasing.  A few of the students didn't copy from the book.  Instead, they plagiarized education websites.  Ya know, the first time I encounter the examples of the ocean as a factor for the difference in weather between Arizona, and Chile in an answer about humidity, I'm impressed.  When four of my not-so-great students do it as their summary line, I'm suspicious.

Fearing the worst for the library reports that are due in a couple weeks, as part of the in-class quiz, I said, "Name three forms of plagiarism."  Only half the students knew the material that we had been doing specific to this science class, but all of them were up on forms of plagiarism including inadequate paraphrasing and failure to cite paraphrased material.  My students assured me that they would never do such a thing.  When I pressed gently on the fact that they need bibliographies for this report and that bibliography must be done in one of the standard styles (like G_H, I'm not sure that I ever learned the names for various styles so I don't care which one they pick; they just have to pick one and stick with it), they assured me that they can do it and oh, no, they would never cite Wikipedia, Google, or Ask.com because that is completely inappropriate for a college report.

I'm sure I'll be back the first week of December to give a full vent on the "Banging my head" thread.

[mystictechgal]

I agree with those saying they never learned a particular style while in high school.  Granted, I was graduated in the early '70s, but all we got was a lesson on what plagiarism was and how to avoid it by using citations.  Probably due to the amount and type of reading I did, I gravitated naturally to the Chicago style and still use it preferentially.  I tested out of all of the freshman comp classes, so I never learned a particular style there, either.  However, as I can read, I am capable of following a style guideline if a particular style is required.  But, in all of my years of taking classes I think I've only had two professors that stated a preference (one APA, one MLA).  Other than in those classes I have continued to use Chicago style footnotes.  I don't normally, unless specifically requested, even double-space between lines and no one has ever complained or said anything about it.  Perhaps they are all just grateful that I do cite sources.  That has been complimented, which, until I started reading these fora, I found highly curious.  I mean, doesn't everyone?  What a naif I was.

[science_expat]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

[scampster]

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

Every journal in the sciences has its own way it seems, so all this talk about MLA and Chicago goes right over my head. For my dissertation, the thesis office just said "Make sure it is consistent" with the subtext that they have no clue what the standard in our field is so they'll only check that we consistently applied some format or other.

I too didn't learn a specific style in high school.

[mystictechgal]

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

Every journal in the sciences has its own way it seems, so all this talk about MLA and Chicago goes right over my head. For my dissertation, the thesis office just said "Make sure it is consistent" with the subtext that they have no clue what the standard in our field is so they'll only check that we consistently applied some format or other.

I too didn't learn a specific style in high school.

<chuckle>  For what it's worth, I didn't know that the style I was using was called Chicago until I saw someone use the term here on the forum.  I looked it up and my reaction upon seeing the guide was: "Oh, so what I've been doing all along has a name?  Who knew?"

[conjugate]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

See, I learned early on that in Math, many journals cite like this:

In [1], the authors establish Equation 3 for the special case of....  Jones and Smith use this approach to further narrow the bounds in [2]....

Then the bibliography lists the references in alphabetical order by author, and chronologically for articles with the same author-set:

[1] Him, Me-and, A Special Case of Equation 3, J. Abstract Nonsense 4 (1996), pp. 123-129.

[2] Jones, A. and Smith, B, Further Narrowing a Bound, J. Pointless Trivia 2 (1999) pp. 200-230.

If this has a name, I don't know it. 

[elsie]

It's saying something about me, I don't know what, that I was able to pull my composition textbook from spring, 1982 off the shelf and find out what documentation style I was taught then. It was a footnote/endnote version of MLA before the birth of parenthetical citation.

[llanfair]

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

Every journal in the sciences has its own way it seems, so all this talk about MLA and Chicago goes right over my head. For my dissertation, the thesis office just said "Make sure it is consistent" with the subtext that they have no clue what the standard in our field is so they'll only check that we consistently applied some format or other.

I too didn't learn a specific style in high school.

<chuckle>  For what it's worth, I didn't know that the style I was using was called Chicago until I saw someone use the term here on the forum.  I looked it up and my reaction upon seeing the guide was: "Oh, so what I've been doing all along has a name?  Who knew?"

Same here, MTG - the only style I was taught from Grade 5 on through HS, the only one I ever saw or knew of, turns out to be Chicago.  Maybe it's the only one my teachers were taught as well.

[madhatter]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

Your first three examples are within spitting distance of APA, minus an odd comma or two. The fourth one isn't famliar to me.

[gennimom]

I'm someone else who never learned any particular citation style. In my field, in text references are like this:

According to Expat et al. (2006), the most important parameter...

or

Global ocean temperatures have been shown (Expat and Friend, 2007)...

In the bibliography it's either

Expat, S. (2004), The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345.

or

Expat, S. The joys of underwater basketweaving, Journal of Crafts, 23, 333-345, 2004.

I have no clue what citation style(s) this represents.

What madhatter said. Your reference citation (in bold if you can read it) says APA to me as well, except for commas in the place of periods.

[concordancia]

When writing my dissertation, I was a bit surprised to find out about Turabian, since I am most familiar with disciplines that are pretty concerned with their citation styles. I can only name MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian, but I assume there are others as well.

[science_expat]

Following on from Conj., I should say that my examples are from discipline specific journals. Nature (and I think Science) are more like:

Numerous authors (superscript 1-4) have previously suggested that...

And the reference list is in order of citation without article titles.