APA Style is an editorial style developed by the American Psychological Association and used for written materials in the social and behavioral sciences. APA Style requires you to cite the sources you have used in two places: the in-text citation and as part of your reference list at the end of your paper.
In APA style, each quotation or paraphrase must include the author's last name and the year of publication. For quotations you must also include the page number.
By paraphrasing (or summarizing), you convey the author's original meaning in your own words. Below are two examples:
The potential for truly integrated online research continues to develop at a rapid pace (Moore, 2001).
Baker (1989) comments on the fact that students who have a great interest in laboratory work attain good results.
It is when a group of words taken are from a text or speech and repeated by someone other than the original author or speaker. The following is an example of a brief quotation:
They point out that, “Informational labels are especially important for nonprint materials because they can furnish critical information which otherwise might not be evident from looking at the item on the shelf” (Driessen & Smyth, 1995, p. 32).
When you quote directly from a source that doesn’t have page numbers, you’ll reference something else that makes logical sense. This might be a paragraph #, chapter #, table #, or etc. You can pick a substitute based on your source’s formatting, but most often paragraph is used.
Jones (1998) found a variety of causes for student dissatisfaction with prevailing citation practices (paras. 4–5).
A meta-analysis of available literature (Jones, 1998) revealed inconsistency across large-scale studies of student learning (Table 3).
When there’s no author, cite the first word or two of the title in your in-text citation. Italicize titles of books and reports. Titles of shorter works (articles, web pages) should be in quotation marks. Capitalize important words in titles in the text (note this is different from how titles appear in References).
A similar study was done of students learning to format research papers ("Using Citations," 2001).
When there’s no author OR date, cite the title as above and then include "n.d." (for "no date").
Another study of students and research decisions discovered that students succeeded with tutoring ("Tutoring and APA," n.d.).
*Hint: Library databases provide citations that you can copy and paste, and then check against one of the guides. Look for a Citation link, and then choose your style.