Research Guides: LARC162: Environmental Justice: Same World, Different Built Environment: APA Citations

APA Overview

Using APA

How APA citations work:

You cite a reference where you use it in the text with the format of (Author, Year)
Then you list the full citation at the end of your paper, with the list in alphabetical order:
- Author last name, first initial. (Year). Title, additional information. DOI or URL
- This changes depending on the type of reference with additional authors being included and/or the title of a book or journal being used for a shorter work appearing in a larger work (i.e. an article appearing in a journal or a book chapter)
Each citation used in the text should be found in the reference list at the end of your paper and vice versa - remember the goal is to give the reader enough information to look up the reference themselves if they wish.

How to create citations:

Try a citation manager! These work with MS Word and do all the formatting for you - just check the data input and output (like using spell check - you still need to proof-read!). Check out our guide on citation managers (link above) and start using Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote.
Use a quick citation generator like ZoteroBib. Just paste in a DOI or an article title and it will create a citation you can copy into your paper.

For more details see the full guide on Purdue OWL or APA's website.

APA Citations in Presentations Slides

APA Style Blog
"The APA Style Blog is the official companion to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition. It's run by a group of experts who work with APA Style every day. We publish weekly posts to talk about what we love—writing, publishing, and APA Style. We explore what APA Style is and how it works in a variety of areas, including reference citations of every sort, grammar and usage, the publication process, and social media. Occasionally we feature guest bloggers who write about more technical issues."

Examples from the blog:

How and when to cite page numbers
by Chelsea Lee
"All APA Style in-text citations have two parts: the author and the date. Some in-text citations also include page numbers (or other location information when page numbers are not available, as with some online materials). This post describes when and how to include page numbers in APA Style for different kinds of citations as well as how to include the appropriate location information in lieu of page numbers when page numbers are not available."
How to cite something you found on a website
by Chelsea Lee
"Perhaps the most common question we get about APA Style is “How do I cite a website?” or “How do I cite something I found on a website?
First, to cite a website in general, but not a specific document on that website, see this FAQ.
Once you’re at the level of citing a particular page or document, the key to writing the reference list entry is to determine what kind of content the page has. The Publication Manual reference examples in Chapter 7 are sorted by the type of content (e.g., journal article, e-book, newspaper story, blog post), not by the location of that content in a library or on the Internet. The Manual shows both print- and web-based references for the different types of content."
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"What seems to flummox our readers is what to do when the content doesn’t fall into an easily defined area. Sometimes the most you can say is that you're looking at information on a page—some kind of article, but not a journal article. "