APA FORMAT OF CITATION AND REFERENCING

APA stands for American Psychological Association, This is a standard style format used to cite different sources. The main purpose of having an APA format of citations is to prevent plagiarism of content. Plagiarism means the act of taking another person’s work and using it as your own, without acknowledging the original author.

Plagiarism is illegal and there can be serious ramifications for plagiarizing someone else’s work, but plagiarism can be prevented and one of the way is by including citations and references in your research project.

Citation is a quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, especially in a scholarly work while reference is a standardized method of acknowledging sources of information and ideas that you have used in your document in a way that uniquely identified the source.

Below is a guideline on how to cite and reference your work.

How to Cite from different sources

1. How to cite from a book

If you got content from a book and you wish to use that in your project cite it as follows.

In-text citations are citations within the main body of the text and refer to a direct quote or paraphrase. They correspond to a reference in the main reference list. 

In-Text Citation: one author

(Author’s Last Name, Year published)

For example

(Wagner,2010)

In-Text Citation: Two authors

(Author 1 Last Name & Author 2 Last Name, Year Published)

For example

(Wagner & Michael, 2010)

In-Text Citation: Three to five authors

(Author 1 Last Name, Author 2 Last Name, Author 3 Last Name, Author 4 Last Name, & Author 5 Last Name, Year Published)

(Halder, Raju, Cortesi & Agostino, 2011)

In-Text Citation: Six or more authors

(Author 1 Last Name et al., Year Published)

(Chong et al.,2007)

After the researcher has cited from a book as shown above he/she can reference as follows

A reference list is a complete list of references used in a piece of writing including the author name, date of publication, title and more. An APA reference list must:

• Be on a new page at the end of the document
• Be centred
• Be alphabetically by name of first author
• If there are multiple works by the same author these are ordered by date, if the works are in the same year they are ordered alphabetically by the title and are allocated a letter (a,b,c etc) after the date
• Contain full references for all in-text references used

Format of APA referencing

Author’s surname, initials (Date published). Title of source. Location of publisher: publisher. Retrieved from URL

Author’s rule

1. Initials are separated and ended by a period. i.e Jacob,T.A
2. Multiple authors are separated by commas and an ampersand i.e Jacob, TA., Thomson, M., & Conwell R.

Date rule

1. Date refers to date of publishing.
2. If the date is unknown ‘n.d’ is used in its place i.e Jacob, T.A (n.d)

Title rule

This is the title of the book being referenced

Publisher rule

1. If in the US the city and the two letter state code must be used California, CA
2. If not in the US the city and the country must be stated e.g Nairobi, Kenya

URL

This is used if the source is an online source

2. How to cite from a website

There are two types of citation from a website

i. Citing a website with an author

The format is as follows

Author, A. (Year, Month Date of Publication). Article title. Retrieved from URL

 Example

Jamila,M.(2020 February 20) Study with Jamila. Retrieved from https://jamila.design.blog/2020/02/20/proposal-writing/

ii. Citing a website without an author

The format includes

Article title. (Year, Month Date of Publication). Retrieved from URL

Teen posed as doctor at West Palm Beach hospital: police. (2015, January 16). Retrieved from http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Teen-Posed-as-Doctor-at-West-Palm-Beach-Hospital-Police-288810831.html

3. How to cite a journal

For journal articles, these are replaced with the journal title, volume number, issue number and page number.

The format structure is:

Author surname, initial.(year).Article title .journal Title, Volume Number (issue or part number, optional ), page numbers Retrieved from URL

Example

Mitchell, J.A. (2017). Citation: Why is it so important. Mendeley Journal, 67(2), 81-95. Retrieved from https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/reference-manager