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Welcome to the APA Style Guide overview! (6th Edition) In this overview we will cover:

• What APA is exactly and why we use it here. • The Basic forms of APA that you will use in your writing • And finally we will show you resources that you can use to properly implement

APA citation in your writing. Part 1: Introductions Ok, so what is APA? It is method of citation that allows readers to quickly identify and locate the source you use in your documents. It is not a form of writing. Why is Citation important? Citation and Reference are an address for the information's source and protects you from any cases of Plagiarism. By including the Citation and Reference, your reader can find the Source used in your writing. This helps them if they wish to find more information about the topic you are discussing in your paper. It also helps your reader identify those elements of your writing that were not created by you, eliminating any uncertainty on their part.

APA was created by the American Psychological Association. There are several other forms of Citation out there such as MLA, but for most of your courses here, you only need to be concerned with APA. When to Cite So, when should you cite? Whenever you are presenting a quote, idea, opinion or fact that comes from an external source, that is when you should cite. The failure to recognize or properly cite those items could be considered Plagiarism, as essentially, you are presenting ideas that are not your own. So what do you need to know exactly in regards to APA? Well to use APA properly you need to provide a simple citation in the text of your paper when you use a Source. This citation must have a corresponding Reference at the end of your paper. In the next section, you will learn how to cite properly in your paper, and then Section 3 will go over the creation of the Reference list. Part 2: Citations A citation should be used whenever you quote, paraphrase or summarize material from a source. Many writers often forget to cite properly when they paraphrase or summarize, as they are not as clearly distinguished as a quote. Sometimes a writer may feel that because they are using their own words to explain someone else’s idea, that they do not need to cite. Even though you may not be using the exact words from another source, the

ideas you are presenting are still not your own. Therefore, a proper citation is needed. The Elements of a Citation In its most basic form, every citation you add should have the author’s last name and the year that the source was published. eg. (Smith, 2009) This is the bare minimum for a citation, but as you will soon see, there will be some variation to this depending on the manner in which you insert the citation or the nature of the source. There are several methods in which to insert a citation in your text: 1. Integrated, In-text In this method, you are actually weaving your source author's name into the text you are writing. You are referring to the source by mentioning the author directly. With this method you must include the publication year in parentheses. It should look something like this: As Jones (1996) explained, the use of sources lend credibility to a paper. This could also have been written like this: In 1996, Jones explained that the use of sources lends credibility to a paper. As you can see, the two essential elements- the author's last name and the year of publication have been included. Citing in this manner can be a good method of citation when writing a summary or paraphrasing a source as you are integrating the citation more fully into your own wording. 2. Non-Integrated In-text With this method you are not weaving the author into your text. The author is not mentioned directly but referred to, along with the publication year, in parentheses directly following the citation: The use of sources lend credibility to a paper (Jones, 1996), and is a good practice. The use of proper citation is critical for good writing (A. Jones & P. Jones, 1996). This method is best for direct quotes but could also be used in summaries and paraphrases. Again, the two essential elements are the author's last name or names and the publication year. The elements are enclosed in parentheses and separated by commas. It is always best practice to include the page on which the reference appears:

(A. Jones & P. Jones, 1996, p. 2). If no page numbers are used (such as with a website) then a paragraph number would be acceptable, as well, in this format: (Jones, 1998, para. 2). Variations on the basic Citation Form There a dozens of different variations on the form of a citation. This is caused by such variables as multiple authors and the type of source you are using. We could spend hours covering all of them, but, instead, we will just focus on a couple of the most common that you may encounter. A complete list of variations has been included as an attachment to this video. More than one Author Citations In some cases, a source will have been written by more than one author. For those cases, the previously mentioned methods still apply, however some enhancement needs to be made with your citation. A. For citations with two authors, apply the above methods (surname, publication year). However, both surnames should be used in your citations, not just one. (Jones & Howard, 1997) B. For citations with more than two authors, the first citation using that source must contain the surnames of all authors and the publication year.

(Jones, Jones, Howard and Moore, 1999, p 67). In subsequent references, only the first author's surname followed by "et al." and the publication year needs to be used.

(Jones et al., 1999) Special Cases: Authors with the same Last Name

What if the source has more than one author and they have the same last name? Well, on those occasions, the authors should be listed by the alphabetical order of their first names, with the first initial followed by a period listed in the citation.

(A. Jones & P. Jones, 1996)

Web References

What about websites? With all of the information available on the web, using Websites for citations is becoming more commonplace. This makes tracking down the source that much more important as there could be multiple sites with similar information. To cite a Website you need to include the URL in your text in this fashion:

APA style is a widely accepted style of documentation, particularly in the social sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style).

Part 3: The Reference List A reference list goes hand in hand with a citation. Any time you have a citation you MUST have a reference list. The reference list should be on a separate page at the end of your paper. You must include references for all sources used in your document. You should not include any reference for a source that was not used in your document. This diagram represents all required elements for a proper reference based on this example:

NOTE: These will both be visuals Author, A. A. (1996). Title of work. Location: Publisher. Pope, R. L., Reynolds, A. L., & Mueller, J. A. (2004). Multicultural competence in student affairs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Your references need to be listed alphabetically by the author's last name. You only need to list each reference once, no matter how many times you use a citation from a source.

The author information is followed by the year the document was published, in parenthesis, the name of the document and then finally the publisher information which includes the city, state and name of the publisher. Be sure to use a colon before writing the publisher’s name.

The name of the book, periodical, journal, newsletter or magazine, in which the reference is found, should be italicized. If you are using the name of an article or chapter for your reference, this should not be italicized or put in quotes.

The DOI

When using electronic Journal Articles, frequently the publisher may include a DOI.

SHOW EXAMPLE

Author, A. A. (2006). Title of work. Doi:xxxxx

For no DOI

Author, A. A. (2002). Title of work. Retrieved from http://www.xxxxxxxx

This is a method for identifying electronic resources. It may be found on the title page of a PDF or in an articles reference information.

For electronic resources, you should use the DOI whenever possible. If you have a DOI for an electronic source, you do not need to provide additional publisher information.

More Examples

Linked to this video will be reference list example template that you can use to help develop your own reference list. This list includes examples for book references, journal articles, newspapers, & electronic source materials such as web sites. Part 4: Resources http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx