It is important to refer to sources in a consistent way. Look at the following example:
Van Doorn (2015) discovered with a survey that most people dislike pistachio ice cream (zie Wikipedia). However, in more recent research, pistachio ended up in the top-3 of favorite flavours [3]. Bibliography Wikipedia, Pistachio ice cream. Van Doorn, F. (2015). Opinions on pistachio ice cream. In: The yearly ice cream magazine. Ice print, Harlem. [3] Ice cream favorites of 2017. A. Zuithoff. http:// zuithoff.nl/ijslijst2016.html
Is it easy to find which source belongs to which information in the text? And this was just with three citations. What if there are 20?
To solve this problem, citation styles have been developed. We show two commonly used styles here: APA and IEEE. APA is widely used in science. IEEE is often seen in ICT publications.
Is a certain style recommended in your study programme or are you allowed to choose?