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Cite Your Sources: APA

APA Style

What is APA Style?

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.
 

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).
 

Number of Authors
  • 1 author: (Lastname, Year)
  • 2 authors: (Lastname 1 & Lastname 2, Year)
  • 3 or more authors: (Lastname 1 et al., Year) ​
  • Corporate or Group Author: (Acronym, Year)
    • Mothers Against Drunk Driving will be (MADD, 2000)​
       

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)

APA Citation Examples

Source Type

References Formatting

In-text Citation

Book

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name. DOI (if available) 

(Author, Year)

Webpage,
Group Author

Group name. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL.  

(Group name, Year)

Scholarly 
Article
, more than 2 authors

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy 

(Author 1 et al., Year)

Image

Photographer, A. (Year). Title of photograph [Photograph]. Source. URL 

(Photographer, Year)

 

Helpful Websites

Citation Generators

Scribbr logo of a red graduation cap Scribbr is a popular citation generator for APA-style citation. Remember that with any system-generated citation, you should check against the example for accuracy. 

 

MS Word Logo blue with white W.If you're writing your paper in Microsoft Word, you can use the References tab > Insert Citation to add citation informaiton and save it to your document. Word will format the citation and generate in-text citations. See Microsoft's online tutorial for more information.

Database Citation Generators

What is a Database Citation Generator?

Our library search engine can automatically generate citations when you click into the record for a resource. Look for the Quotation symbol with the word Citation under it. Make sure to choose the style of citation from options on the left and to to review the citation before using, as there are often small errors.

Image of an auto-generated citation in the library search engine.