APA Citation
What this handout is about...
This Handout will cover several aspects of APA style:
- Why we cite sources
- What needs to be cited
- How to use parenthetical citations
- How to create the reference page
- Additional APA style tips and
- Quick Links to other APA reference sources
We've designed this handout to introduce you to the concepts and formats of APA citation. For authoritative coverage of APA style, see the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. This handout covers the APA format, but we also have handouts on MLA and CBE formats. You may also want to consult the libraries tutorial.
Why do we cite sources?
One purpose of citations is to leave a trail of clues for interested readers. When you document papers correctly, you provide others with a way to access the sources you have used. Another purpose of citation is to promote ethical responsibility and academic consistency in a discipline's writing community. If you do not cite and document your sources carefully, you run the risk of plagiarism.
See our handout on plagiarism.
What needs to be cited?
When you write a paper in the social sciences, you often use and build on information other people have researched and compiled. Whether you are writing a report or preparing a literature review, it's important to give credit where credit is due. If you incorporate or refer to others' ideas or concepts in your paper, you must document each one using a citation and a Reference Page. In addition to facts and statistics, you must also acknowledge an individual's ideas or theories.
You need to document:
- Direct quotes
- Paraphrases (rephrased or summarized material)
- Phrases taken from sources
- Words specific or unique to the author's research, theories, or ideas
- Use of an author's argument or line of thinking
- Historical, statistical, or scientific facts
- Articles or studies you may refer to within your text
Admittedly, as you gather these items, you may encounter some gaps. What if the journal article has no name, but it has an author, and a publication date? What if the website gives you a page number but not a title or a date? In these cases remember: If you have it (author's name, website title, date, etc.), use it; if you don't have it, you can't use it.
You do not need to document:
- Proverbs, axioms, and sayings ("A stitch in time saves nine.")
- Well-known quotations ("The personal is political.")
- Common knowledge (Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, or oxygen's atomic number is 8, or Vincent Van Gogh painted "Starry Night".)
Sometimes it's difficult to be sure what counts as common knowledge, especially when writing in an academic discipline new to you. Perhaps you aren't familiar with Van Gogh or an atomic number. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if a knowledgeable reader would be familiar with the information. You may, in fact, need to consult with a reader within the discipline. If she'd have to look it up, you probably should document it. If you aren't sure if something counts as common knowledge, document it to be safe.
How to Use Parenthetical Citation
Parenthetical citations are placed within the text of your paper. Below are examples of how to cite print sources and electronic sources. See Section 3.39 in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Manual) for additional instances of both.
Print Sources:
In-text citations take form in one of three ways.- Paraphrase (one option): Author, followed by the date in parentheses, continuing with the rest of the sentence, and then ending the sentence with the page number in parentheses.
Example: Havid (1999) from Johns Hopkins University found that patient contentment rose with doctor involvement (p. 5).
- Paraphrase (another option): Author and date are mentioned in the sentence. This may occur when you don't mention the research the author has done but quote directly from her/him.
Example: In Havid's 1999 study, he found the rise of patient contentment rose with more doctor involvement (p. 5).
- Direct quote from text: Author, date, and page number in parentheses all follow the quoted material.
Example: It has been noted that "patient satisfaction increases with increased doctor-patient interaction" (Havid, 1999, p. 5).
Electronic Sources:
These sources are slightly different; because many electronic sources do not provide page numbers, you will want to cite either the paragraph number or the heading information (APA Manual, 2001, p. 120).- Cite the paragraph number after the year of publication and within the parenthesis.
Example: As Myers (2000, 5) aptly phrased it, "positive emotions are both an end-better to live fulfilled, with joy [and other positive emotions]-and a means to a more caring and healthy society."
- Cite the heading information after the date of publication and before the page number.
Example: "The current system of managed care and the current approach to defining empirically supported treatments are shortsighted" (Beutler, 2000, Conclusion section, 1).
How to Create the Reference Page
The Reference page, entitled "References," will appear near the end of your written document--that is, after your study, report, conclusion, or literature review. The Reference page lists the bibliographic information for all the sources that you cited in your paper, not all works you have merely consulted. This page is not necessarily the last page in your paper; tables and/or appendices, if you have them, will come after the Reference page.
Examples of Reference Page entries
In this brief handout we don't have enough space to offer an example of every source form you might cite. Here are examples of the most popular types of sources used in the social sciences, as found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition, page numbers as indicated.
- Articles or chapters in an edited book, two editors (p. 252)
Bjork, R.A. (1989) Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. In H.L.
Roedigger III & F.I.M Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp. 309-330).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. - Books (p. 248)
Beck, C.A.J. & Sales, B.D. (2001). Family meditation: Facts, myths, and future prospects.
Washington DC: American Psychological Association. - Electronic References (p. 274)
- Stand-alone document, no author identified, no date
GVU's 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000, from
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ Gvu/user_survey-1997-10
(Note that there are no periods at the end of an electronic citation.) - Daily newspaper article, electronic version (p. 279)
Hilts, P.J. (1999, February 16). In forecasting their emotions, most people flunk out. New York
Times. Retrieved November 21, 2000, from http://www.nytimes.com - Message from an online discussion group (p. 278)
Lewandowski, A (2000, March 9). Changing names and the effects on professional status for
newly married women [MSG7]. Message posted to
http://www.theknot.com/discussgroup/html.
NOTE: Email should be cited as a form of personal communication. (APA Manual, section 3.102).
- Stand-alone document, no author identified, no date
- Periodicals (p. 239)
Herman, L.M., Kuczag, S.A., III, & Holder, M.D. (1993). Responses to anomalous gestural
sequences by a language-trained dolphin: Evidence for processing of semantic relations and
syntactic information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 184-194.
Additional APA style tips
APA style includes more than just guidelines for creating references and parenthetical citations. It includes other style rules as well. Here is a small sampling:
- Use figures (15, 87, 291) to express numbers 10 and above and words (six, four, seven) to express numbers below 10, although there are exceptions. (Section 3.42)
- Use a zero before the decimal point when numbers are less than one. (Section 3.46)
- Capitalize the first word in a complete sentence AND the first word after a colon that begins a complete sentence. (Section 3.13)
- List statistics (Sections 3.52-3.61), tables (Sections 3.62-3.74), and charts (Sections 3.77-3.86) in a specific way.
- Cite personal communications, like letters, memos, and personal interviews, within the text only and not in the Reference list because the data is considered unrecoverable. (Section 3.102)
Resources
The Manual: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. 2001 Washington, DC: APA. (Available in Davis library at the reference desk, University Stores, etc.)
The APA homepage: http://www.apastyle.org/index.html This is a great page that highlights the 5th edition changes and answers most FAQs about APA style, especially those about electronic sources.
Other web pages we highly recommend:
- If you're wondering how to cite a book, email, or movie, Western Carolina's Writing Center lists examples of many resources, especially e-sources: http://www.wcu.edu/writingcenter/isource.asp?page=apa_format.html
- If you are worried about APA style for the whole paper, University of Indiana's page is almost as extensive as the APA manual itself: http://www.ipfw.edu/casa/WC/NavBarLinks/handouts.html
- If you need to find more examples of quirky sources (like listservs, newsgroups, and FTPs), the Bedford/St. Martin's publishing company website is easy to navigate and also gives guidelines for MLA, Chicago and other styles: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/citex.html
