In my country, you don’t learn to solve a problem before you face the problem. This was how I felt when I had to write my assignment with APA style referencing for the first time in 2016. I had already spent 12 years of my academic life without citing any reference in my assignments and nobody corrected me; because nobody cared. Then one beautiful sunny morning, my life changed when I was suddenly expected to know anything and everything about writing references without any given resources or guidelines. Suddenly, everyone started to treat APA referencing as a common sense. But, let me tell you, IT IS NOT. Especially, if you are a fresher at university, it definitely is not. So, here’s a how to guide on APA style referencing that may help you in your next assignment.

“APA” stands for the American Psychological Association, which is the largest scientific organization for psychological research. The APA Style of referencing is considered the standard format used in scientific papers and journals regarding behavioural and social sciences.

Now, to cite your resource in APA format, you need to know the following:

• The author’s/authors’ full name
• Title of the article
• Name of the journal it was published in
• Publication date
• The URL you are retrieving your reference from

When you are reading or researching online, make sure you are noting down these details for every article you go through. You can use a note app and just copy paste the link beside these information. Be messy at this point. It’s okay.

In APA referencing, you need to cite your resource in two parts. In text citation and list citation. The in text citation, is, basically the citation you write inside the body of your article. And the list citation refers to the end listing of all your resources in the “reference” section. In APA referencing, you do not need to add footnotes as, through citations in the text, you are eliminating the need to use footnotes at the bottom of the page. The list citation part of the references should give readers enough information to locate sources.

For in text citation:

While writing your article, notice the lines or paragraphs you are taking inspiration from or reference from a resource. After you are done writing from that source (never copy-paste, I mean NEVER!), don’t put the last full stop yet. Put a bracket, and inside the bracket is where you put the in text reference. Inside the bracket, you write the sir name of the author, then put a comma, then write the publication year of that article, close the bracket and put a full stop to end the sentence. Here’s an example:

What if the publication has multiple authors?

In case of two authors, you need to separate the two sirnames with an “&” and in case of more than two, just separate the names with comma before you reach the last two names that are to be separated with an “&” again. This is applicable for multiple authors in the same publication. For example:

What if you take the information (reference) from multiple publications?

At times, while going through your literatures, you will find similar referral points in multiple publications. This is where, we need a new punctuation. The semcolon. You will have to cite every article in the above mentioned manner by separating each one of those with a semicolon. For example:

What if you take reference from multiple publications but they are from the same author?

I find this to be rare case, but sure, this has a rule too. You need to write the sir name of the author and then separate the years of his multiple publication with comma. For example: (Mitchell, 2007, 2013, 2017) and (Mitchell & Smith, 2007, 2013, 2017). And if there are more than one publication of the same author with the same year, you got this too. Just separate them with a, b, c etc. For example: (Mitchell, 2007a), (Mitchell, 2007b), (Mitchell, 2007c)…

Okay, now you know all the basics about in text citation, we can move towards some more fun stuffs. For instance, how will you cite a publication, without the author name?

While writing, you will come across plenty of publications and not all of them will give you all the necessary information. So, if the author is unknown, the first few words of the reference should be used. This is usually the title of the source. If it is the title of a publication such as a book, periodical, brochure or report, is should be italicised. For example: (A Book About Good Things, 2017).

And if it is the title of an article, chapter or web page; it should be written in quotation marks. For example (“An Article About Good Things”, 2017).

Sometimes we need to take articles from everyday resources; like a newspaper, a group or an organization. In those cases, when you use the name for the first time in your article, for the first cite, the full name of the newspaper, organization or group must be used. Subsequently, for the further citations, this can be used in a shortened form. For example: First cite: (International Citation Association, 2015), Further Cites: (Citation Association, 2015).

What about quotations? How can you quote someone and cite the author in text? Well, in that case, you need to cite the source by enclosing its parentheses. The quote should be written inside double inverted commas. The position of the double inverted commas differ according to where the quotation falls. Write the quoted part only, within the double inverted comma. After the quotation ends, cite the author and the year of the publication as per the usual method. You can add the page number from where the quote has been taken from. Example:

Alright. Now that we are done with the basics of in text citation in APA style referencing, we can move towards learning the list citation part. This is where you cite all your resources in detail so that the reader can track back to the source if she/he wants to. This is typically the “Reference” part of your paper. Good thing is, the format of list citation is pretty much same for any kind of resources. Because, obviously…it’s a list. In APA style, the list for references cited in the text of a paper are listed. It’s not a bibliography, but a list of the sources cited within the text. For the reference list, you will need to format the following:

A. Sequencing

B. Letter and punctuation formats

The sequence must be arranged in an alphabetical order (A-Z) by the surname of the first author. The template should be like this:

• Author’s surname
• Comma
• Space
• The initial of author’s first name
• Dot
• Space (if the author has multiple names before the surname)
• The initial of author’s middle name (if the author has multiple names before the surname)
• Dot (if the author has multiple names before the surname)
• Comma (if there’s multiple authors)
• Space
• Then write the second, third, fourth authors’ names like the first author
• Space
• The year of the publication inside a first bracket
• Dot
• Space
• The title of the publication
• Dot
• Space
• The name of the journal or book publisher (in italic)
• Comma
• Version/ Volume/ Edition number (If applicable)
• Page number (If applicable)
• Dot
• Space (In cases of online resources)
• Retrieved on (date) (In cases of online resources)
• Retrieved from (In cases of online resources)
• Space (In cases of online resources)
• Retrieved link (In cases of online resources)

Example:

To list newspaper or magazine article without an author:

The first line of the citation should be put a bit left than the rest of the lines. This is called a hanging indent. To use hanging indent, just expand the paragraph option of your Microsoft Word and in the segment named “indentation,” change the option underneath “special” from “none” to “hanging.” That’s it. Indentation is easier when you do this formatting once the list is ready. Just select the entire list and then change the indentation. Done!

So, now that you know the basics of APA referencing, start writing beautiful pieces. May you reach the top of your academic goals. God bless.