DMACC Criminal Justice. Assignment Rules and Proper APA Formatting

Transcription

1 DMACC Criminal Justice Assignment Rules and Proper APA Formatting

2 Rules to Remember When Completing Assignments 1. All answers to questions in your assignments, discussion boards, journal entries, outlines, and presentations must be in your own words. 2. Do not copy your course textbook, or any other resource, word for word as an answer to your assignments. 3. You can summarize, paraphrase, or encapsulate information from the textbook into your assignments. This is okay. 4. If you must use a quote, figure, statistic, phrase, or sentence from any resource, including your course textbook, it must be placed in quotation marks and properly cited. 5. All resources used in this course must be formatted in the APA style.

3 Referencing Your Course Textbook At the end of all your writing assignments, include a list of resources you used for that assignment (References page). If you summarized or paraphrased information in your own words from the course textbook, you do not need to list your course textbook as a resource in your discussion boards or journal entries. If you use a quote, or if you use any specific word for word phrases from the course textbook, you will need to put that text in quotations marks and cite it. A proper reference is listed both at the end of a writing assignment and inside the text, right after information is used. In-text citing is formatted in this manner at the end of the sentence: (Lastname, year). An example of this would be (Barger, 2017). Or, you could cite within the sentence like this: According to Barger (2017), the

4 We Do Not Use Wikipedia as a Cited Source Do not cite or use information from a Wikipedia article as one of your resources (same goes for other questionable sources, such as e- how.com, history.com, howthingswork.com, etc.). It is okay to use Wikipedia to find additional resources for your assignments (look at the list of sources at the bottom of the article), but Wikipedia itself should not be used as one of your cited sources for your assignments.

5 APA Formatting APA formatting provides information about the original source and where it can be found. This is important for instructors to use for grading in order to see where you gathered your knowledge. This information includes, but is not limited to: the author(s) name, in this format: Lastname, Firstname-initial. Middle-Initial. the year or full date of publication: (2017). OR (2017, December 6). the title of the article or material, capitalize only the first word the name of the periodical, book, newspaper, etc. The full URL (website link) from the site where it was specifically found, use this format: Retrieved from (do not put a period at the end of the URL)

6 General APA Format for Website Resources If the source is a website, not from a journal article or newspaper, use this format (with author when possible, without if not listed on the site): Lastname, Firstname-initial. (Year of publication). Title of document in italics. Retrieved from Title of document in italics. (Year). Title of Website Where It Is Located. Retrieved from Newspaper Article: Lastname, Firstname-initial. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Title of Newspaper in italics. Retrieved from Journal Article: Lastname, Firstname-initial. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue), page-range. Retrieved from

7 Examples of Proper APA Formatting for Website Resources (Note: For a References page in a Word document, the font and paragraph formatting would need to be adjusted.) Miners, Z. (2009, December 9). Four things you should know about community college. U.S. News and World Report. Retrieved from DMACC academic skills guide. (2008). Des Moines Area Community College. Retrieved from

8 Examples of NOT Properly Formatted Sources (Reason: too generic, no specific website, author, or information was provided) (Reason: too generic, no specific video or information was provided) (Reason: Author, date, and other required information is missing) mbia (Reason: This is a Wikipedia article we don t use Wikipedia articles, and no other required information was provided)

9 Additional Resources on APA Formatting The course syllabus Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from Documenting sources: A brief guide to APA style for DMACC student writers. (2010). Des Moines Area Community College. Retrieved from