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ECE 210: Research Process: APA Citations

APA Manual

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Asociation is the offical guide of APA citation formatting. You can find the manual at the reference desk and in the reference section of the library's collection.

APA Presentations

PowerPoint Presentations on different aspects of APA style.

Sample APA Paper

Click the image for an informative example of a research paper with explanations of APA formatting:

More Questions? APA Resources

The Purdue OWL APA Formattting and Style Guide is another helpful resource for APA citation. In text citions (giving credit for any quotes, facts, paraphrases, or summaries in your paper) and creating a list of references.

Harvard Guide icon

The Harvard Guide to Using Sources provides excellent advice on the mechanics of citations. Great visual examples on citing various sources in MLA, APA, and Chicago.
APA Style Blog Icon

The APA Style Blog is a great resource for those hard to answer questions, like when do you use a DOI, how to cite a YouTube comment, and more.

Easybib:  enter information about your book, article, or website and Easybib will create a citation. Use code CanadaCo116 to create an account.

APA How-to Videos

Need more help?  This excellent video series by the Memorial University Libraries explains how to cite using APA in a step-by-step process. 

APA Reference Page

When you use outside sources, you will need to create a References page that tells your reader all the information they need to find the source themselves if they want to.


See the examples below of commonly used resources.

 

For more information about creating a Reference list, see Purdue OWL's APA Formatting guides.  There you will find examples of how to cite many different types of sources.

 

APA Book Format

Format:

Last Name, First initial. (Year). Title. City and the state Published: Publisher.

 

Example:

Highmore, B. (2001). Everyday life and cultural theory. New York, NY: Routledge.

 



Pictorial Example

APA Articles from the Databases


Format:

 Author Last Name, Initials. (year). Article title. Journal title, volume(issue), page range. DOI

 

Example:

Jones-Smith, J. C., Dieckmann, M. G., Gottlieb, L., Chow, J., & Fernald, L. H. (2014). Socioeconomic status and trajectory of overweight from            birth to mid-childhood: The early childhood longitudinal study-birth cohort. Plos ONE, 9(6), 1-10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100181


Pictorial Example

 

APA Websites

Format for citing an entire website:

Title of Website. (Year, Month website page was published). Title of Website Article. Retrieved from http://websitepage.org

Format for citing a page from a website:

Authors Last Name, First initial. (Year, Month website page was published). Title of Website Article. Title of Website Page.     Retrieved from http://www.websitepage.org

Example:

Cain, A., & Burris, M. (1999, April). Investigation of the use of mobile phones while driving. Retrieved January 15, 2000,

         from http://www.cutr.eng.usf.edu/its/mobile_phone_text.htm

 


Pictorial Example

Picture of a website

APA: Images

Image from Artstor

Format: 

Artist/Owner/Creator. (Date of Production or n.d.) Title of Work/Image Name. [Format]. Retrieved from URL

Example:

Monet, C. (1877). La gare, Saint Lazare, Paris. [Oil on canvas]. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org


Pictorial Example 

  APA In-Text Citation

Basic Format for a Short Quote

Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author’s last name followed by the year of publication in parentheses. Put the page number (preceded by “p.”) in parentheses after the quotation.

 

Critser (2003) noted that despite growing numbers of overweight
Americans, many health care providers still “remain either in
ignorance or outright denial about the health danger to the poor
and the young” (p. 5).

 

Basic Format for a Longer Quote

Longer quotes are indented to set them off.

      A Report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2004) outlined trends that may have contributed to the
      childhood obesity crisis, including food advertising for children as well as
a reduction in physical education
      classes and after-school athletic programs, an increase in the availablity of sodas and snacks in public
      schools, a growth in the number of fast food outlets..., and the increasing number of highly processed, high-
      calorie and high-fat grocery products. (p. 1)


 

Basic Format for a Summary or Paraphrase
 
Include the author’s last name and the year either in a signal phrase introducing the material or in parentheses following it.
 
According to Carmona (2004), the cost of treating obesity is
exceeded only by the cost of treating illnesses from tobacco use.
 

How to create a hanging indent

To create a hanging indent in a Microsoft Word document, go to Paragraph -> Indents and Spacing -> Indentation -> Special -> Hanging. See the illustration below.