Undergraduate Basics of APA Tutorial Colorado State University-Global Campus

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1 Undergraduate Basics of APA Tutorial Colorado State University-Global Campus

2 Basics of APA 2

3 What is APA? Why do we need to use APA? APA stands for the American Psychological Association. This association has its own style manual, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Manual), for researchers to use when writing/formatting their papers to be published. The (APA Manual) is mainly used in the Psychology and Social Sciences fields. CSU-Global offers mainly Social Science degrees. Other fields of study also have their own style manuals such as the MLA Modern Language Association and the Chicago Manual of Style. Another reason why you need to use APA style is because you may be asked at some point in your career to write a brochure, a white paper, or an executive summary for your job. You will need to know how to cite correctly even when you are outside CSU-Global. 3

4 What are In-Text Citations and Reference Citations? In-Text Citations are used by APA to give credit to someone else s ideas or information instead of footnoting, which some of you may have used in the past. In-text citing is much easier than footnoting. In-text citations only contain the author(s) last name(s) and year of publication. However, if you are quoting, the page/pages of where the quote was found is also included. Example of an In-Text Citation: (Stephens & Smith, 2010). Reference Citations are used by APA and many other style manuals at the end of a paper to reference what information was cited in-text by other sources. For each in-text citation, there must be a reference citation to match it. Reference citations contain some of the following information: 1) Author(s), 2) Date of publication, 3) Title of publication, 4) Volume & Issue (if a journal article), 5) Name of Journal, 6) City & Publisher (if a book), 7) URL (if website), and 8) page numbers. The type of information that is needed, depends on the type of source (book, article, website, etc.) Example of a Reference Citation that matches the In-Text Citation above: Stephens, N. E., & Smith, R. R. (2010). Alcohol related deaths: A college plague. Journal of Higher Education Leadership, 2(16),

5 Paraphrasing and In-Text Citations Paraphrasing is taking information from a source and summarizing it in your own words. Be careful of patch writing. Patch writing is replacing a few of the words from the original source. This is not paraphrasing. Even though you have summarized the information in your own words, you must give credit to the source otherwise it would be considered plagiarizing, which means stealing and passing the information off as your own. Examples of paraphrased information using in-text citations: End of sentence in-text citation: Target has a strong brand reputation and they are ranked fourth in the top twenty U.S. retail brands (Target Corporation, 2009). In-text citation that uses the author as a part of the sentence: The Target Corporation (2009) states on their website that they have a strong brand reputation and are ranked fourth in the top twenty U.S. retail brands. 5

6 Quoting and In-Text Citations Quoting is taking information from a source and copying it word for word. Anytime you quote a phrase, sentence, or paragraph, you must include quotation marks around the exact words taken from the text of your source. Also notice that the period is after the parentheses. Examples of a quotation in-text citations: They have set a reputation to be the provider of trendy, distinct products at a low cost, all the while having a unique approach to marketing (Schlosser, 2004, p.100). Howard (2005) stated that the brand is known for being stylish, cheap chic (para. 1). It is very important to put the page number (p.) or pages (pp.) you found the quote. If you are quoting text from a website, you must put the paragraph number (para.) 6

7 Breakdown of an ARTICLE reference citation Harold, C. (2009). Citations should begin with the author s last name, followed by a comma, followed by the author s initial of their first name (APA feels using an author s first name could lead to gender bias) and it is then followed by a period. The year of the article is in parentheses. The only time the month and date is included is if this is a magazine or newspaper. Do not use a month and date for journal articles, only a year. It is then followed by a period. On Target: Aura, affect, and rhetoric of design democracy. The title of the article is lower case, except the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. It is then followed by a period. Public Culture, The title of the journal/magazine is capitalized and is italicized. It is then followed by a comma. 21(3), The volume number is italicized and then followed by the issue number, which is NOT italicized, but is within parentheses. It is then followed by a comma. Sometimes, you will not find an issue number, just list volume. When listing the page numbers, do not include a lower case p. or pp. List only the page number(s). It is then followed by a period. Newspapers like USA Today, may not list page numbers, only sections. doi: / Retrieved from APA recommends using a digital object identifier (doi) when it is available. The doi helps keep the link for online articles stable. If the doi is not provided, then you do not need to put anything after the page numbers. There is no period after a doi. If you were citing a website, you would need to include Retrieved from The retrieval date is no longer needed. There is no period after the URL. The link should not be live. EXAMPLES OF REFERENCE CITATIONS: 7

8 CSU-Global APA Resources 8

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41 Questions? We hope that you have found this to be helpful. If you have any questions, contact the CSU-Global Librarian, Victoria West-Pawl at or

42 Please fill out a 3 question survey. Your opinion is important as it will help me to improve these sessions. Thank you for your time and feedback!