How to Use Specific Citation Styles for Formatting Your Thesis?
Citation styles are very important if you want to turn your ordinary paper into a quality extraordinary paper with excellent formatting. You will find the latest citation style examples and samples on Purdue owl site.If you don't know what a citation style is, it is a specific style of formatting a research paper or essay, so from the title page to the reference, there are some detailed styles and formatting to be followed for every citation style.
The major citation styles are APA, MLA,Harvard,Turabian,Chicago, Oxford among others.
When you are asked to format your essay according to specific citation styles, don't panic. Get the help of an essay writer. If you feel you can pull off an essay with perfect citations, then try to do it yourself.

Some academic research sites will give you detailed citation styles for a few formats, but you may not find the details for all citation styles on one site. Once you know what citation style your supervisor wants for your paper, information should be quite easy to find on the internet.
But I will give you a general idea about these different citation styles. In general, when you use the APA format, first focus on the title page. It must be perfect with the name and date of the author and the research title. A running header and page numbers are also required in APA.The reference list has the general alphabetical list of author's last name and date or year, book title, publisher and location. APA is the most commonly used citation style for science or social science essays. APA and a similar AMA citation style is used by the clinical and healthcare professionals. Most theses and dissertations are also based on APA style of citation. APA citation uses in-text citations with author name and year. APA papers are expected to be typed, double spaced, and with font size 12.
One example of APA is given here: (Source: Purdue owl)
Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Mood management across affective states: The hedonic contingency hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 1034-1048.
MLA is also a popular type of citation format and used for humanities and law essays and dissertations. The MLA along with OSCOLA citation format are popular in law schools. The MLA uses page numbers in case of in-text citations. Author and page number instead of author and date or year is used for the citations. The works cited list has the name of the author, book title, publisher, location and date. Usually the author full name is used in Works cited page and for the in-text citations, author's last name is used with page number. Page number is very important in MLA and all citations and works cited list must have detailed page numbers.
An example of MLA style citation is given here: (Source: Purdue owl)
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1987.
OSCOLA and Oxford or other legal citation styles usually avoid in-text citations, and use footnotes or end notes for the citation of the research paper. OSCOLA is particularly relevant for law papers. All citations appear as footnotes and citations also include cases and legislations. Bibliography consists of author's last name, title of text, publisher and year.
One example of OSCOLA referencing is (Source: Cite this for me):
Cottrell S, The Study Skills Handbook (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).
Harvard citation style is commonly used by University students for papers and research, in the U.K.and also in Australia and Canada. Harvard citations emphasizes on in-text citations. Direct quotes when used include page numbers, author name and year. References are added as a list at the end of the assignment. Harvard citation does not have elaborate title page format unlike APA. However Harvard citation style definitely uses a reference list with author last name, year in parentheses, title of the book, location and publisher.Like the APA style, Harvard citation uses page numbers for journal articles in the reference list. Names of books are italicized.The Harvard and APA styles are particularly popular among University students.
An example of the Harvard citation style:
Dahl, R. (2004). Charlie and the chocolate factory. 6th ed. New York: Knopf.
The Chicago citation style uses footnotes and endnotes and bibliographic entries for journal include author's name, article title, journal title and issue information including page number. Citations for magazine use page numbers. Page numbers are often used in the Chicago style.
One example of the Chicago style is given here:
Susan Peck MacDonald, "The Erasure of Language," College Composition and Communication 58, no. 4 (2007): 619.
The Turabian style is largely used for papers in arts, history and humanities. In the Turabian style, sources are cited by the author's last name and year of publication. The Turabian system also uses notes at the end of the essay,so it is a merger of many citation styles. However notes are of bibliography style, so serves as a list.
See an example of the Turabian citation style
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 64-65.
In most cases, the citation style will already be given or specified by your supervisor, and if you are not sure which style to use, consult your supervisor. By the time you are a year through your undergraduate, you should be able to master all these citation styles. The internet is a good place to look up if you need detailed information on these different citation styles. This blog also now has examples from almost all major citation styles, so it should not be too difficult for you to write a paper with perfect citations. Also, you can seek the help of an academic editor or a school paper writer. Good luck.