APA Style Guide: Citations

When writing a paper for class, you may be required to cite one or more outside resources that you used in your research. This simply means that you should find expert information sources to back up your writing, and cite (or quote) them in your paper. You will do this through the use of citations and references.

A citation is broadly defined as a quote from a book, article, passage, or other text or author. A reference is broadly defined as something that refers a reader to another source of information. Citations and references contain the basic information that is needed to find a specific document, including the document’s author, title, and publication information.

Both citations and references are used to give credit to authors for original ideas and arguments. That means that whenever you make a reference to another document or use an argument from another author in your paper, you need to cite that document and give credit to the author for their ideas.

The APA style requires that two types of citations be provided for each outside source that you use in your writing: a references page citation, and an in-text citation.

The source lists that appear on the references page of your work must provide the most complete information possible about a resource. These references are designed to help readers locate the resources that you use in your research and writing.

They must include the following elements:

• Author
• Date of publication
• Title of Work
• Publication Information

Examples:

Gore, A. (2006) An Inconvenient Truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it. Rodale Press.

Carolina, D. (2014). A model-driven methodology for developing secure data-management applications. IEEE Transactions of Software Engineering, 40(4), 324-337. 10.1109/TSE.2013.2297116

You can find more information on how to create references on the following sub-pages:

• Citing a Book
• Citing an Article
• Citing a Website

When you are cite information from an outside source in your writing, the APA style requires that an in-text citation be provided immediately after the source is referenced.

These in-text citations require an author’s last name and the date of publication for the document, for example, (Smith, 2010).

Examples:

• Profit is “directly tied to employee motivation” (Mathias, 1984, p. 64).
• Several studies (Anderson & Yost, 2014; Benson, 2001; Zimmerman & Ross, 1999) indicate that...

You can find more information on how to use in-text citations on the In-Text Citations Page.