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Citations - Retired SP 2020

This guide introduces you to the basics of MLA, APA, and ASA Style style.

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APA Guidelines and Examples

Direct Quoting - When you are using someone else's exact words.

  1. If you are using a quote that is less than 40 words, enclose the quote in quotation marks and add the author’s name (unless it is already in the sentence), year of publication, and page numbers in parentheses.  You also will need to add each work from which you cite to your Works Cited page. Here are three examples:

     

    • She asserts, “A lot of what you see on the Internet is the same thing you see everywhere else” (Basch, 1996, p. 9).

    • Books about the Internet are “out of date by the time they are published” (Basch, 1996, p. 1), and they are never very comprehensive.

    • Basch (1996) believes “print is pretty much a losing proposition” (p. 1).

  2. If you are using a quote that is more than 40 words, do not use quotation marks. Instead, put the quote on a new line and indent the whole block approximately 1/2 inch from the left margin. Keep the quote double-spaced. Remember to add a parenthetical citation and put the work on your Works Cited page.  The parenthetical citation comes after the final punctuation mark. For example,

She asserts the following:

A lot of what you see on the Internet is the same thing you see everywhere else:  opinion masquerading as fact.  People do not communicate out of an abstract desire to transmit information.  They communicate to achieve a result, to induce action or belief.  In some ways I’d trust a Usenet news posting more than I would a newspaper article.  The article may be better researched, better organized and more complete, but the posting is far more transparently a work of opinion. (Basch, 1996, p. 9)

 

Paraphrasing or Referring to Works - Acknowledging the sources you used in your research.

    1. If you mention the author’s name in the paragraph, then you just need to put the date in parentheses. You only need page numbers when quoting or when you are referring to a specific part of the work

      Basch (1996) investigated the use of the Internet.

 

  1. If you do not mention the author’s name, then you must put it in parentheses with the date.

    In a recent book about the Internet (Basch, 1996), search engines were described in detail.

 

NOTE: There are specific rules for works that have more than three authors. See the Publication Manual in the Library [ REF BF 76.7 .P83 2020 ].

Example of In-Text APA Citation

 

 APA In-Text Frankenstein

 


Adapted from the Citations Guide by the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College Library. 

APA How-to Guide

This guide explains how to set-up an APA style References page in Word 2010 step by step.

APA How-to

Click on the link below to open the full document as a PDF.

Helpful websites

The sites serve as either an introduction to APA style or work as citation generators.