AGRN 338: Weed ID and Control: Citing Sources

How do I Format In-Text Citations?

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.

Paraphrase

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.

Quotation

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).
 

In-text citations when there are no page #s

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).

In-text citations when the author is unknown

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).
 

In-text citations when author and date are unknown

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.).

Each in-text citation will have a corresponding Reference citation.
 

How do I create a Reference list?

• Arrange your citations alphabetically by author’s last name
• Arrange anonymous (no author) works by the first significant word in the title
• Double-space between each entry
• Indent the second line of each entry (a hanging indent)

What does a Reference citation look like? 

*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.