BC-OWL Resource: APA Documentation
All information that comes from a source other than your own writing and thinking must be cited. This includes information such as research, facts, dates, and statistics, as well as others' writing that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
(More information on quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing is available at www.bridgewater.edu/WritingCenter/manual/paraphrase.htm.)
APA citation style includes the author's last name and date of publication.
Regional dialect features that appear in a student's writing may adversely affect teachers' evaluation of the student's writing ability (Wolfram, 1991).
Note that
When the author's last name is mentioned in the text, the parenthetical citation immediately follows the name and should include only the date.
Wolfram (1991) reported that regional dialect features in a student's writing may adversely affect teachers' evaluation of the student's writing ability.
Note that the preferred verb tense is past tense (reported). In APA style, several sources of research may be noted within parentheses, as follows.
Researchers (Dillard, 1972; Labov, 1970; Smitherman, 1977) found regular, rule-governed patterns in use of the verb be in African-American speech communities.
Note that
You should also note that the report of research is preferred over quotation or reference to a specific portion of a text.
When a quotation is used, however, the page number is included in the parenthetical citation.
Research on contemporary American dialect patterns has implications for educators: "Knowledge of the structural language details of the community language system serves as the basis for understanding how these language differences may influence basic educational skills such as writing and reading" (Wolfram, 1991, p. 265).
If the writer being quoted is named in the text, the date should follow the author's name, and the page number should follow the quotation (after the quotation marks, before the period), as illustrated here.
Wolfram (1991) noted that "Knowledge of the structural language details of the community language system serves as the basis for understanding how these language differences may influence basic educational skills such as writing and reading" (p. 265).
In APA style, the bibliography, or list of sources used, is called "References." This title appears at the top of the bibliography page without underlining or quotation marks. The bibliography page should be double-spaced throughout. Sources are listed in alphabetical order according to author's last name. Each bibliographic listing begins at the margin of the page, with second line indented (and with third, fourth, and fifth line indented, if you need that many lines). Sample entries below illustrate the format for a book with a single author, an essay from an anthology (or book of texts by different authors), an article from a popular magazine, an article from a scholarly journal, and a Webpage. (For more sample entries-showing more than one author, a translated work, an article from a reference work, etc.-see www.bridgewater.edu/WritingCenter/manual/APAbib.htm.)
Book:
Wolfram, W. (1991). Dialects and American English. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Chapter from Anthology:
Wolf, M., & Vellutino, F. (1993). A psycholinguistic account
of reading. In J. B. Gleason & N. B. Ratner (Eds.),
Psycholinguistics (pp. 352-382). New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
For more sample entries, see sample APA bibliographic entries.
Posted by A. L. Trupe March 27, 2001