InfoGuides: INTP 460 Issues in Interpreting: APA Citation Style

Last Updated: Mar 5, 2024 10:11 AM

Using APA

APA (American Psychological Association- 7th ed. is used in the areas of the behavioral and social sciences. The OWL Purdue Writing Center also has guides on the APA 7th ed. This BibGuru guide link is highly recommended, especially for unusual formats.

There are formatting rules one follows when writing a research paper (margins, page numbers, titles, capitalization, etc.), creating in-text citations in the body of the paper, and writing full citations on the References page (the last page). View the APA sample paper. Some professors may ask you to submit your papers to TurnItin, a plagiarism-checking database.

You must have both the in-text citations and the References page which is a list of all sources you used for your paper. You can also use a citation management system like Zotero.

Many of the databases have citation capabilities, but you need to double-check your citations to make sure they are correct as there are sometimes errors.

Why Should We Use Citations?

Why Do We Need to Cite Sources for Papers or Presentations?

We need to acknowledge another person's work and ideas and give him credit.
You have more credibility because your paper shows you reviewed, evaluated, and selected sources during the research process
You avoid plagiarism.
Your sources are easier to find. Readers can find the sources you used.

How Do You Incorporate Sources Within Your Paper or Presentation?

Quoting-Copy a short passage word for word, set off by quotation marks.
Summarizing--Restate the main ideas in your own words which is shorter than the origiinal
Paraphrasing--Take an idea and put it in your own words.