Answered By: Tiffany Hebb
Last Updated: Aug 06, 2025     Views: 17

Generally, they're pretty good - but definitely not perfect. Ideally, you will use those as a starting point. Then review the citation examples for the right style (MLA, APA, Chicago Author-Date, and Chicago Notes & Bibliography are the most commonly used at DePauw) against your citations to check them before submitting your paper. 

Many library databases (including the Ebsco ones and JSTOR) will occasionally display "sentence case" in their titles, which carry into their generated APA citations - meaning they capitalize each word of the title of the article. APA, unlike other common citation styles, does NOT use sentence case. Here's an example from a library database:  

This is how an APA citation *should* look, with only proper nouns, the initial word, and the initial word after a semicolon capitalized in the article title.

This is not an "always" thing - you just have to look for it. Occasionally there will even be a title accidentally in all caps. If you download citations into Zotero, the incorrect capitalization will carry to there as well - you'll need to manually correct this mistake.

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