Dr.

Wayde Marr November 27, 2009

Items to be covered
Why APA?

In-Text Citations
Citations (Basic Forms) Conclusion

Why is APA?
Not a writing style Used for correctly citing sources and giving credit.

Standardized way to document your sources when

writing your paper Way to avoid plagiarism

In-Text Citations
There are 8 general rules of thumb

when using in-text citations, and applied when:

Paraphrasing, or Summarizing, or Using ideas, or Quoting directly from a source

Rule 1
If you paraphase, summarize, or use an idea from a

source, you would include authors last name (or title of the article if there is no author), and year. Example with author: Charles Dickens is the founder of the modern Christmas tradition (Smith, 2005).

 Example without author: Charles Dickens is the

founder of the modern Christmas tradion (Dickens and Christmas, 2005)

The comma goes between the author and the year

Example with unknown date: Charles Dickens is the

founder of the modern Christmas tradition (Smith, n.d.).

Rule 2
If you use direct quote, use authors last name ( or title of

the article, if there is no author), year, and page number. Example with author: Cats are more self-dependent pets in comparison to dogs (Brown, 2005, p.5). Example without author: Cats are more self-dependent pets in comparison to dogs (Cats and Dogs, 2005, p.5).
Nb. Pay attention to where the commas, periods, and parenthesis are placed

Rule 3
Quotations longer than 40 words should be placed in a

free-standing block of lines: For example:

Smiths 1996 study discovered:
I have noticed that students often have difficulty with the APA style. Many often ask their teachers for help. However, after practice and learning, most students seem to grasp it and comment that it is often like riding a bike; once you learn, you do not forget. (p.20)

Note: start quotation on new line and indent all lines in the quote by 5 spaces. End with page number in parenthesis.

Rule 4
If the source is a government agency or corporation,

cite using name of source or in a parenthesis Examples

According to the Ministry Of Education (2000), only sixty percent of children graduating from high school are functionally literate.

Only sixty percent of children graduating from high school are functionally literate (Ministry of Education [MOE], 2000).
Further citations to the same source, use abbr. The results in students from schools listed as having over crowded classrooms, were markedly worse than in schools with an average of 25 students per classroom (MOE, 2000).

Rule 5 parenthetical citations contains two When your

or more works, place them in the order that they appear in the reference list, separated by semicolons.
EXAMPLE Experts are convinced that the use of LED display arrays will become the prominent technology beyond the year 2008 ( Jones, 2008; Peters, 2007).

Ruleauthors with the same last name, then use first 6 Two
initials with the last name.
EXAMPLE

According to S. Brown (1999), the children who attended ..

Rule 7 or person-to-person communications follow a Personal

different format: email, letters, interviews, etc.
EXAMPLE
A researcher said that students studying online performed and succeed in class just as well as those studying in the traditional face-to-face classes (Brown, personal communication, February 13, 2002)

Rule 8
If you use a source that was cited in another source

(secondary source), name the original source in your signal phrase (which contains the authors name and indicates that an outside source would be used)

EXAMPLE Romaine Shelton dismissed the research results of the Ape study as being merely analogy (as cited in Brown, 2002).

CONCLUSION
Not all sources on the internet are credible. Therefore

be highly discriminatory of sources Wikipedia is NOT a credible source The 8-rules for in-text citations are only a few basic rules, however there are a myriad of credible web resources on the APA topic.