Seneca Libraries APA Style Guide

You must "cite" sources that you have paraphrased, quoted or otherwise used to write your research paper. Cite your sources in two places:

(1) In the body of your paper where you add a brief in-text citation.

(2) In the References list at the end of your paper where you give more complete information for the source.

IN-TEXT CITATION

In-text citations are inserted in the body of your research paper to briefly document the source of your information. Brief in-text citations point the reader to more complete information in the reference list at the end of the paper.

• In-text citations include the last name of the author followed by a comma and the publication year enclosed in parentheses: (Smith, 2007).
• If the author's name is not given, then use the first word or words of the title: (Naturopathic, 2007).

Paraphrasing (using your own words)

• When you write the information in your own words, cite the source as follows:

Mother-infant attachment became a leading topic of developmental research following the publication of John Bowlby's studies (Hunt, 1993).

Or if you use the author's name in the sentence, then, include the year of publication following his/her name:

Hunt (1993) notes that mother-infant attachment became a leading topic of developmental research after the publication of John Bowlby's studies.

Quoting directly (taking words directly from a source)

• When you quote directly from a source, enclose the words in quotation marks and add the page number to the in-text citation:
  

  Mother-infant attachment has been a leading topic of developmental research since John Bowlby found that "children raised in institutions were deficient in emotional and personality development" (Hunt, 1993, p. 358).

• When you quote from electronic sources that do not provide page numbers (like Web pages), cite the heading and the paragraph number following it:
  
  

  Bowlby described "three phases of the separation response: protest, despair, and detachment" (Garelli, 2001, Bowlby's Initial Stance section, para. 3).

Works by More Than One Author

When you don't know the author

• When the author is not named, include the first one, two or three word(s) of the title and the year of publication.

How are these citations inserted in the text?: Examples

Professionals in Naturopathic medicine may suggest lifestyle changes in addition to prescribing alternate medications (Naturopathic, 2007).

Those that do not follow the diet correctly are risking unexpected side effects ("Atkins Cheaters", 2006).

For more information about in-text citation please see the Seneca Guide to Integrating Quotations and Paraphrasing Content (APA Style)

• Italicize the name and volume number of the journal or magazine, but not the issue or page numbers.
• Italicize the journal or magazine title and capitalize all important words within it.

• For newspaper articles, precede pages by "p." for a single page or "pp." for more than one page.
• Italicize the newspaper title and capitalize all important words within it.

To cite journal, magazine and newspaper articles from a library database:

• Begin by citing the article as you would a print article. Follow examples provided under Journals and Magazines: In Print and under Newspapers: In Print.
  
• Some electronic content is assigned a unique number called a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). If a DOI is provided for an article, include it after the page number(s) of the article as doi:doi number (you do not need to put a period after a DOI number).
  
• If no DOI number is given, Seneca Libraries recommends that you add Retrieved from ______________ database as opposed to the URL for an article or database. This is to avoid difficulties with links.
  
• Note: If you would like to look up an article from a DOI number, click here and enter the DOI number where indicated.

For articles accessed directly from the Internet (and not from a library database):

• Begin by citing the article first as you would a print article. (See Journals and Magazines: In Print and Newspapers: In Print.)
• Add: Retrieved from http://__________ (you do not need to put a period after a URL)

Basic Format (One Author)

• Begin by citing the book in the same way you would cite a book in print. Do not include place of publication and name of publisher for eBooks.
• Add a DOI number if one is provided
• If no DOI number is provided, Seneca Libraries recommends that you include a retrieval statement: Retrieved from ________database.

The Seneca Libraries have paid for access to several reference databases, including: Access Science - McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Britannica Online, Canadian Encyclopedia Online, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Financial Post Advisor, Oxford Art Online, etc. These databases provide quick, factual information.

• Use n.d. (no date) when a publication date or date of latest revision is not provided.
• If necessary, break the URL after a slash or before a period.
• Give a retrieval date (i.e., the date the Web site was viewed) as the content of Web sites may change over time.

Basic Format (Corporate Author)

• Citations for images that have been duplicated in your research paper are written as a note directly below the image.
• Look for the copyright date and name of the copyright holder at the bottom of the web site home page.
• When referring to the image in the text of your paper, use the figure number and/or image title: for example, "The results from the first case study shown in Table 2 ..."