APA Citation Style – APA Reference Style of Writing a Paper

APA format is the legitimate style of the American Psychological Association that has a set of rules implemented for writing reports in areas of study like social and behavioral sciences. They have a particular format of citing references in the reference page of papers, essays, articles and reports. Reports submitted either for scientific or technical reasons, are carried out and put forth as a result of a lot of research from other referencing materials found on similar topics from existing reports. It is always recommended to keep the source of information as transparent as possible. Otherwise, when a person cites directly from another’s work without mentioning the source of information, they can be accused of plagiarism which is taken strict action against. If a student is found guilty of plagiarism they might receive grade zero or may even be suspended altogether.

Referencing citations in text are done within parenthesis. Commonly, the parenthesis in text citations encloses the author’s last name and the date of publication separated by a comma. This reference is either placed at the specific location of the article being referred to or at the end of the sentence that contains the reference. At times the name of the author is a part of the sentence thus it is omitted from the parenthetical referencing and just the year of publication is mentioned with brackets. In cases of inclusion of a quotation, the page number is also mentioned in the citation.

At the end of the report there is a detailed representation of the bibliography occupying the reference section of the report. APA style implies that references of only those articles whose citations are already included in the text may be presented in the reference section. This style of APA citation is what sets apart the reference section under this format from a standard bibliography. In a bibliography, one normally includes references or citations of certain articles that may have been used as a background for knowledge acquired but not necessarily incorporated within the text of the report.

In case of single authors that are cited in the text with their last name and year of publication within parenthesis, when mentioned in the reference section they must typically consist of author’s last name, first initials, year of publication, title of the book, location and publisher in that order. If it’s an edited book with more than one author one must follow the above order and accompany the space after the book title with the initials, last name and ‘Ed’ in parenthesis of the editor. If the edited publication has no author but just the editor’s names then you must list the last name and first initials of the editor or editors, followed by ‘Ed’ or ‘Eds’ within brackets. This is followed by the year of publication, book title in italics, location and publisher. In case of two authors, they must be represented in the order of their appearance in the original publication. If they are cited within closed parenthesis, use ampersand (&) between them. In cases of three to five authors, the first reference to the article includes the names of all the authors, although, when the citations are repeated in the same document, only the principal author name is mentioned followed by “et al”.

In cases of books translated from another languages, we first cite the last name and first initials of the author and the year of publication followed by first initials and last name of the translator and the notation ‘Trans’ within parenthesis. This is continued with location, publisher and a note of the original date of publication. Thus with careful exercise of these citation rules there are bound to be no mistakes in submitting a report with complete compliance with the APA norms.