Citations Coach teaches you to build Evidence Style citations, block by block. The early levels each pair a short lesson with game play that reinforces it. A genealogy citation takes one of four types and is assembled from seven building blocks.
Master those, then learn to layer an original record with the online image you worked from, and finish with worked examples of common record types, censuses, wills, deeds, tax rolls, newspapers, online trees and memorials among them. Every record in it is a real one you can verify for yourself.
Citations Coach runs in any browser. There is no login, no membership, and nothing to install. Anyone can play, as often as they like. It is a way in for researchers who learn by doing rather than by reading, and a way back in for anyone who has bounced off citation instruction before.
SOURCE
Citations Coach is built, with Elizabeth Shown Mills's permission, upon Evidence Style citations, as set forth in the following manual for history researchers. Its three opening chapters discuss everything in Citations Coach: the seven-block model, the “Record / Access / Citing…” layers, the four citation types, and every template. The game is simplified; the book is the authoritative source.
Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2024), Chapter 1, “Fundamentals of Research & Analysis,” Chapter 2, “Fundamentals of Citation & Style,” and Chapter 3, “Building a Citation.”
BUILT BY
Game design, pedagogy, content choices, and prose written by Jan Joyce; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript drafted by Claude under Jan's direction during interactive sessions.
Claude (AI assistant by Anthropic), “Citations Coach: Master Evidence Style Citations, Block by Block,” HTML application, written and directed by Jan Joyce, August 2026.
Master Evidence Style citations, block by block.
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