Library Homepage: Citing Your Sources: APA Citation

What is APA Style?

The following definition of APA Style is provided by the American Psychological Association:

APA Style^® originated in 1929, when a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers convened and sought to establish a simple set of procedures, or style rules, that would codify the many components of scientific writing to increase the ease of reading comprehension.

As with other editorial styles, APA Style consists of rules or guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. It concerns uniform use of such elements as

selection of headings, tone, and length;
punctuation and abbreviations;
presentation of numbers and statistics;
construction of tables and figures,
citation of references; and
many other elements that are a part of a manuscript.

APA Style rules and guidelines are found in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Work Cited

"What is APA Style?." APA Style. American Psychological Association , 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014. <http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/what-is-apa-style.aspx>.

In-Text Citation: APA Style

In-text Citations: APA Basics, from Purdue's OWL
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab provides extensive guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using APA style

The Librarians at Suffolk County Community College have made this short video tutorial in order to illustrate the rules of in-text citations in APA:

Reference List (or Reference Page): the Basics

Reference List: APA Basics from Purdue's OWL
In accordance with APA Style, your reference list should appear at the end of your paper. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text. These basic guidelines from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) will help you create your Reference List.

The Librarians at Suffolk Community College created this short video tutorial to illustrated the basics of creating the APA-style Reference Page.