English 25
Running Head: APA Style Helpsheet [Type text]
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APA style HELPSHEET
Cinnamon Jenson
SLCC Phil 1120-009
Spring, 2013
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Plagiarism is the intentional or unintentional use of others’ ideas and words without
clearly acknowledging the source of that information. Citations are references to a published or
unpublished work. This document, written in APA format, is a guide for you, the student in
writing your academic articles (Research Summaries, Response papers or Argument Essays).
This guide will show you how to avoid plagiarism, how to cite, use quotes to support your
argument, and reference sources in a bibliography.
There are many forms of plagiarism. Most notably, you should never cut and copy and
paste from a website or another paper into your own paper. If you use a quote, always type it
into your word processor, marking it with quotation marks, and cite the source. Less notably,
though, you must cite the source even if you are summarizing or paraphrasing someone’s
argument. Here are some other forms of plagiarism:
• Quoting directly, paraphrasing or writing about someone’s ideas without giving a reference. • Using an author’s exact words without indicating they are quoted and referenced. • Presenting your own version of other people’s ideas without acknowledgement. • Putting ideas into your own words but only changing a few words • Taking an image, diagram or artwork from another source without acknowledgement. • Collaborating inappropriately with other students when individual work is required. • Copying another student’s work or someone else’s work and submitting it as your own.
Plagiarism is an academic crime. Please be diligent in your professional development.
APA style (American Psychological Association) is a particular type of standard
formatting that is required by many behavioral sciences, humanities, and science journals. Other
common styles are MLS and Chicago Style. You may use either, as long as you are consistent
between citations and bibliography. All articles must be written double spaced, using Times
New Roman, 12 point font, with full justification.
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APA Style citations.
Citations indicate who said what. Use citations after you quote someone or summarize
their argument. If you use information from the Internet, you need to cite it IF: It is someone’s
original point or they have an original analogy or example; you are quoting them directly; or if
you are summarizing their argument or reasons for their position. You do not need to cite
common knowledge. If you are summarizing arguments, and you use sources such as Wikipedia
or Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, then cite the web page. Do not cite teachers or
powerpoints (unless it has been published), as this information is open-source for education
purposes.
Citations take the format: (Author’s last name, year of publication: page number of
quote or argument). For example: (Thomson, 1971:41).
Using Quotes.
Using quotes to support your argument is a skill. Note the word “using” quotes, which is
different than simply placing quotes in your paper as a filler. When you use a quote, you are
supporting your own argument with someone else’s idea. Do not overuse quotes, or let the
author do the talking for you. Never use stand-alone quotes, which are quotes that do not
introduce who the author is, or do not summarize what the quote says. Always introduce the
quote, and then summarize the quote in your own words. The reason is that everyone interprets
quotes different, or may focus on something different than you, or may draw opposite
inferences than you intend.
For a 5 page paper, you should use quotes sparingly (no more than one quote, and no
more than five sentences long). If the quote is less than three sentences long, indicate it with
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quotation marks. When you directly quote from an article, use block quotes by formatting the
quote in single space, no quotation marks, and a .5 inch indentation on both sides of the quote,
followed by the citation. Here is an example of a block quote, using Thomson:
One argument against abortion states that a fetus is a person from the moment of
conception because it may grow up to be an adult. Thomson points out that this argument
contains a slippery slope. The slippery slope assumes that if the first step (the adult) is a human,
then so is the next step (a child), and the next step (a baby), and the final step ( a fetus). In other
words, if an adult is a person, then so is a fetus. Thomson thinks the final step does not follow,
and she argues with an analogy:
Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees. (Thomson, 1971: 47).
In other words, an acorn is not an oak tree, even if it might develop into one. Analogously, just
because an adult started out as a fetus, it does not make it a person. There are other necessary
properties that a fetus must possess in order to count it as a person, just as there are necessary
properties that an acorn must possess before it can be considered an oak tree.
Notice how the quote is introduced (we know it is Thomson who gave the analogy), and
then summarized. The author of the above passage uses Thomson to support his own argument
that a fetus is not a person. The author goes on to define what a “person” is, and gives 2-3 pages
explaining what the necessary properties of a person are. Thomson is only used to here to
introduce an analogy, and this analogy is original to Thomson.
When you summarize someone’s argument, you must also cite the author. Otherwise,
the reader might think that you are the author of the argument. Summaries are important to
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condense the author’s argument into a clear and concise way to both help the reader understand
the argument, and to focus on the exact part of the argument that you want to critique. Here is
an example of the use of a summary of Thomson’s argument:
One may argue that a fetus is a person from conception because the fetus may develop
into a child and then an adult. Because the child and adult are considered a person, then so too
must the fetus. Thomson points out that this is a slippery slope by making an analogy: An acorn
is not an oak tree simply because it may develop into one (Thomson, 1971: 47). In other words,
just because an oak tree (fetus) might develop into an oak tree (child or adult), we should not
call the acorn an oak tree.
Notice that there are no quotation marks, because it is a summary of Thomson’s argument, in the author’s own words.
Bibliography.
A bibliography (or Reference) is an alphabetized list of information about published
work. The bibliography is located at the end of an article. There is a formal format for various
sources such as articles, books, web pages, films, etc. and you must use quotation marks,
periods, and italics in precisely the right format.
The most common source you will use for your Response Essay is quoting an author
directly from a book, quoting from an article that is in an anthology of articles, or quoting from
an article from an academic journal. The format for a book, anthology, and article respectively
is:
* * * Book’s Author’s last name. First name. (Year of publication.) Book title. Publisher name: Publisher place.
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Article’s Author’s last name, first name. (Year of publication of the anthology.) “Article title,” in Anthology’s editor’s name first and last (eds), Anthology’s title. Publisher name: Publisher place. Inclusive page numbers for the article. Article’s Author’s last name, First name. (Year of publication.) “Article title,” in Academic Journal title. Volume number (edition). Inclusive page numbers for the article. For web pages, the format is: Author, A., & Author, B. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Online Periodical, volume number(issue number if available). Retrieved month day, year from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/. Podcasts: Author. (Producer). (2007, month date). Title [audio podcast]. Retrieved month day, year from http:// www. Fullwebsite.com.
* * * You can find information about a book on the publisher’s page (the first few pages) of the book.
If you download articles from Files in Canvas, then the information is usually found on the front
page of the copied article (it may be hand written). The copyright date on web pages is usually
found at the bottom of the website.
Here are some examples: Bibliography: Bernstein, M. (2002). “10 tips on writing the living Web.” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites. Retrieved Oct. 29, 2012, from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving. O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. (1971). “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs. Volume 1 (1): 47-61.
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Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Mood management across affective states: The hedonic contingency hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 1034-1048. American Psychological Association. (Producer). (2000) Responding to therapeutic controls. [DVD]. Available from http://www.apa.org/videos. Useful APA Resources See the APA website at www.apastyle.org
· APA style page: http://www.apastyle.org/ · You can check out the APA style blog: http://blog.apastyle.org/ · Check out the APA FAQ page too: http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/index.aspx · The APA manual: American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the
American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Owl Perdue writing lab site at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/06/ for more information.
· Visit the Purdue Owl website. · http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ · Check out NoodleBib Express on NoodleTools.com · http://www.noodletools.com/login.php · Click on APA, select what type of citation you want to create, and enter the relevant
information. · Check out CitationMachine for help with creating the proper citation and reference. · http://citationmachine.net/index2.php