Your reader
should be able to discover — without undue fuss — the source of any language or
ideas you have used in writing your paper that are not your own. This is an
important part of being a responsible member of the academic community. When
you use the ideas or language of someone else, you can refer your reader easily
to that resource by using something called parenthetical citation. In
parentheses, at the end of the quoted language or borrowed idea, key words can
refer your reader to your page of References, where he or she can then find out
whatever bibliographic information is necessary to track down that resource. Failure
to cite a source from which you got an idea, quote or picture is plagiarism.
The purpose
of a parenthetical citation is to show the reader where the writer got the information.
When using information that is not of your own creation, you must include a
parenthetical citation in the body of your piece. The APA system of citing
sources gives the author's last name and the date, in parentheses, within the
text of your paper. The purpose of this is that the reader can then look at
your list of references at the end and find the source of your information.
Following are examples of the different ways you may cite your sources within
the text.
A. A typical citation of an entire
work consists of the author's name and the year of publication.
Example:
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were polar opposites, not only in their personalities but
in their political views and philosophies for government (
Note: Use
the last name only in both first and subsequent citations, except when there is
more than one author with the same last name. In that case, use the last name
and the first initial.
1. If the
author is named in the text, only the year is cited.
Example:
According to Irene Taylor (1990), the personalities of Alexander Hamilton and
Thomas Jefferson were polar opposites, not only in their personalities but in
their political views and philosophy for government.
2. If both the name of the author and the date
are used in the text, parenthetical reference is not
necessary.
Example:
In a 1989 article, Gordon explains
3. When using a quote, give the page number or
chapters following the year.
Example:
Jane Addams "exercised enormous concern for the world of human
relationships, regardless of race or social standing" (Taylor, 1988, p.
11).
NOTE: If using a quote from an online document
with no page numbers, give the paragraph number.
B. Citing a work with no author. Cite in text the first few words
of the reference list entry, usually the title, and year. Use quotation marks
around the title of an article or chapter and italicize the title of a
periodical, book, brochure, or report.
Example:
Civil War reenactments may serve to
“raise public awareness of the historical significance of the battle, … and to raise money for preservation” (140th
Anniversary Commemoration, 2002, p. 1)
C. When the reference is to a work by two authors, cite both names
each time the reference appears.
Example:
Sexual-selection theory often has been used to explore patters of various
insect mating (Alcock & Thornhill,
1983) . . . Alcock and Thornhill
(1983) also demonstrate. . .
D. When the reference is to a work by three to five authors, cite
all the authors the first time the reference appears. In a subsequent
reference, use the first author's last name followed by et al. (meaning
"and others").
Example of a subsequent reference:
Patterns of Byzantine intrigue have long plagued the internal politics of the
US Congress (Douglas et al., 1997)
Note:
When the reference is to a work by six or more authors, use only the first
author's name followed by “et al.” in the first and all subsequent references.
The only exceptions to this rule are when some confusion might result because
of similar names or the same author being cited. In that case, cite enough
authors so that the distinction is clear.
E. When the reference
is to a work by a corporate author, use the name of
the organization as the author.
Example:
Retired military officers retain access to key people in the Pentagon and in
the military-industrial complex making them influential in drafting policy
(Columbia University, 1987).
F. Personal letters, telephone calls, and other material that
cannot be retrieved are not listed in References but are cited in the text.
Example:
Jesse Moore (personal communication, April 17, 1989) confirmed that the ideas.
.
G. Parenthetical references may mention more than one work,
particularly when ideas have been summarized after drawing from several
sources. Multiple citations should be arranged as follows.
Examples:
1. List two or more works by the same author in
order of the date of publication:
(Gould, 1987, 1989)
2. Differentiate works by the same author and
with the same publication date by adding an identifying
letter to each date:
(Bloom, 1987a, 1987b)
3. List works by different authors in
alphabetical order by last name, and use semicolons to separate the
references:
(Gould, 1989; Smith,
1983; Tutwiler, 1989).
The
complete citation for each of your references is given at the end of your article.
This is how it is done in many academic journals. References are listed
alphabetically, of course. The citation should be complete so that a person who
wanted to follow up on your research would be able to find your source of
information. Also, note that the first line of the reference is NOT indented,
but all other lines are. Following are examples for the various types of
sources you will find.
Alverez, A. (1970). The savage tyrant: A study of
totalitarianism.
Nataran, R.,
& Chaturvedi, R. (1983). Geology of the
Hess, J., Car, K., Morib, H., & Milsop, A. (1983). Computers in
the schools.
Stanton, D. C. (Ed.). (1987). The
female model of leadership: Theory and practice in business.
Note: If you are referring to an
article or signed chapter in an edited volume, your reference would look like
this:
Pepin, R. E. (1998). Uses of time in the
political novels of Joseph Conrad. In C. W. Darling, Jr., J. Shields,
& V.
B. Villa (Eds.), Chronological looping in political novels (pp. 99-135).
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. (1961).
Nadeau, B. M. (Ed.). (1994). Studies in the history
of cutlery. (Vol. 4).
Note: To
refer to a single volume, include only the relevant date and volume number; to
refer to another volume in the work, create another entry.
Pepin, R.E., Darling, C.W., &
Villa, V. (1997).
Henry David Thoreau and the environmental movement. In P.
Wursthorn, Jr., J. Darling, & J. Brother
(Eds.), The era of reform (pp. 110-145).
Press.
To use
material that is quoted or paraphrased elsewhere when you do not use the
original resource, your reference will include the source of your language (or
idea)
Affleck, M., Allen, R., & DeLoatch, K.
(Eds.) (1997). Whatever happened to the liberals? Studies in
Political
Science,
77, 235-278.
Note:
the underlined "77," above, is a volume number, not a page number. In
your text, you would quote or paraphrase the idea that Affleck has quoted or used,
as follows:
As Villa
trenchantly points out, "Perhaps the conflict seems so strong because the
stakes are so low." (as cited in Affleck, Allen,
& DeLoatch, 1997).
Use
inclusive page numbers. Do not use the abbreviations "p." or
"pp."
Heyman, K. (1997). Talk radio, talk net.
Yahoo!, 3, 62-83.
Maddux, K. (1997, March). True stories
of the internet patrol. NetGuide Magazine,
88-92.
Include
month and day (if any) as well as the year. Months are not abbreviated.
Military style is not used for dates (not 2 April; instead, April 2). Page
numbers are not condensed (not 178-88; instead 178-188). Discontinuous pages
are cited in full (1A, 9A; not 1A+).
Grover, R.
(1988, September 19). A legislative power play. Business
Week, 34-35.
If the
article is "signed" (meaning, the author’s name is given), begin with
that author's name. (Notice the discontinuous pages.)
Poirot, C. (1998, March 17). HIV
prevention pill goes beyond 'morning after'. The
F6.
NOTE: If the author's name is not
available, begin the reference with the headline or title in the author
position.
New exam for doctors of the future. (1989, March 15). The New York Times, B-10.
A.
General Information
The date
should be the year of publication or the most recent update. If the date of the
source cannot be determined, provide the exact date of your search.
The “path
information” should be sufficient for someone else to retrieve the material.
For example, specify the method used to find the material: the protocol
(Telnet, FTP, Internet, etc.), the directory, and the file name. Do not end
the path statement with a period.
Break a URL
that goes to another line after a slash or before a period. Do not insert a
hyphen at the break.
B. Personal Communication
Electronic correspondences, such as e-mail or discussions on bulletin boards or
discussion groups, are regarded by the APA as personal communication (like
phone conversations or memos), because it is not recoverable by others. Personal
communications are cited only within the text and not the reference page.
In the
text, give the initials and surname of the author and provide as exact a date
as possible:
Example:
In a response to this writer’s questions by email, the historian
R.W. Runyon said that President Franklin
Roosevelt is responsible saving the capitalist system in the
18, 1993).
Or, if the sources name is not used
in your text:
(R. W. Runyon, personal communication, April 18, 1993)
D. Online article
Klein, Donald F. (1997). Control group in Pharmacoptherapy
and psychotherapy evaluations. Treatment.
Retrieved November 16, 1997 from the
World Wide Web:
http://www.apa.org/treatment/vol1/97_a1.html
E. Website
Smith, J. & Doe, H. (1999). Once upon
a Progressive era. Retrieved August 24, 2001 on World Wide
Web:
http://www.progressivism.com/publications/onceupon1.html
Note: Sometimes authors are not
identified, and there is no "last update" showing for the document. Date
website was accessed should be used and efforts should be made to identify the
sponsoring author/organization of the website. If none is found, do not list an
author.
F. No Author Listed
On the World Wide Web, the author's
name is not always available. If you have determined that the material
nonetheless has scholarly integrity (because, say, it was published on the
web-site of a reputable organization or prestigious university), you would list
that resource in your Reference page the same way you would treat a book
without an author: begin your reference with the title. Parenthetically, within
your text, use the title of the document so that your reader can find the list
on your References page and discover, then, how to find that document.
G. On-line abstract
Meyer, A.S., & Bock, K..
(1992). The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Blocking or
partial activation? [On-
line]. Memory &
Cognition, 20. 715-726. Abstract from: DIALOG File: PsychINFO Item: 80-16351
H. Abstract on CD-Rom
Bower, DL. (1993). Employee assistant programs
supervisory referrals: Characteristics of referring and
non-referring supervisors [CD-ROM]. Abstract
from: Proquest File: Dissertation Abstracts Item:
9315947
A Statement on Plagiarism
Using someone else's ideas or
phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose
or through carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing"
includes written or spoken material, of course — from whole papers and
paragraphs to sentences, and, indeed, phrases — but it also includes
statistics, lab results, art work, etc. "Someone else" can mean a
professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine,
encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic resource such as material we discover
on the World Wide Web; another student at our school or anywhere else; a
paper-writing "service" (online or otherwise) which offers to sell
written papers for a fee.
Let
us suppose, for example, that we're doing a paper for Music Appreciation on the
child prodigy years of the composer and pianist Franz Liszt and that we've read
about the development of the young artist in several sources. In Alan Walker's
book Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (Ithaca: 1983), we read that
Liszt's father encouraged him, at age six, to play the piano from memory, to
sight-read music and, above all, to improvise. We can report in our paper (and
in our own words) that Liszt was probably the most gifted of the child
prodigies making their mark in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century — because
that is the kind of information we could have gotten from a number of sources;
it has become what we call common knowledge.
However,
if we report on the boy's father's role in the prodigy's development, we should
give proper credit to Alan Walker. We could write, for instance, the following:
Franz Liszt's father encouraged him, as early as age six, to practice skills
which later served him as an internationally recognized prodigy (
Some More Examples
Here is our original text from
Elaine Tyler May's "Myths and Realities of the American Family":
Because
women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family
wage, single mothers rarely earn enough to support themselves and their
children adequately. And because work is still organized
around the assumption that mothers stay home with children, even though few
mothers can afford to do so, child-care facilities in the
Here are some possible student
uses of this text. As you read through each version, try to decide if it is a
legitimate use of May's text or a plagiarism.
Version A:
Since women's wages often continue to reflect the mistaken notion that men are
the main wage earners in the family, single mothers rarely make enough to
support themselves and their children very well. Also, because work is still
based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children, facilities for
child-care remain woefully inadequate in the
Plagiarism: In
Version A there is too much direct borrowing in sentence structure and wording.
The writer changes some words, drops one phrase, and adds some new language,
but the overall text closely resembles May's. Even with a citation, the
writer is still plagiarizing because the lack of quotation marks indicates
that Version A is a paraphrase, and should thus be in the writer's own
language.
Version B:
As Elaine Tyler May points out, "women's wages often continue to reflect the
fiction that men earn the family wage" (p. 588). Thus many single mothers
cannot support themselves and their children adequately. Furthermore, since
work is based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children,
facilities for day care in this country are still "woefully
inadequate." (May, 1990 p. 589).
Plagiarism: The
writer now cites May, so we're closer to telling the truth about our text's
relationship to the source, but this text continues to borrow too much
language.
Version C:
By and large, our economy still operates on the mistaken notion that men are
the main breadwinners in the family. Thus, women continue to earn lower wages
than men. This means, in effect, that many single mothers cannot earn a decent
living. Furthermore, adequate day care is not available in the
Plagiarism: Version C
shows good paraphrasing of wording and sentence structure, but May's original
ideas are not acknowledged. Some of May's points are common knowledge (women
earn less than men, many single mothers live in poverty), but May uses this
common knowledge to make a specific and original point and her original
conception of this idea is not acknowledged.
Version D:
Women today still earn less than men — so much less that many single mothers
and their children live near or below the poverty line. Elaine Tyler May argues
that this situation stems in part from "the fiction that men earn the
family wage" (1990 p. 588). May further suggests that the American
workplace still operates on the assumption that mothers with children stay home
to care for them (p. 589).
This assumption, in my opinion, does not have the
force it once did. More and more businesses offer in-house day-care facilities.
. . .
No Plagiarism The
writer makes use of the common knowledge in May's work, but acknowledges May's
original conclusion and does not try to pass it off as his or her own. The
quotation is properly cited, as is a later paraphrase of another of May's
ideas.