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This is a guide to citing sources commonly used in academic papers in APA Style (7th ed., 2020). For more information see the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association or the APA Citation Guide.
When you use another person's words, ideas, or images in your paper you must cite (i.e. credit) the source. This is true even when you paraphrase. Avoid plagiarism by citing all of your sources.
Additional reference examples can be found here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples
In-text citations are brief credits in the body of a paper. APA Style uses the author-date citation system.
In-text citations are made up of the name of the author and the date of publication of a source.
Page Numbers. Page numbers are required for quotations. Provide a heading or section name or a paragraph number for sources without page numbers.
(Smith, 2020, p. 5)
Group Authors. When an author is a group the name can be abbreviated. For the first in-text citation, provide the full name of the group followed by the abbreviation:
(American Psychological Association [APA], 2018)
Use the abbreviation for subsequent citations: (APA, 2018)
References are full credits for all sources cited in a paper. References are listed at the end of the paper. All of the elements needed to identify and access an information source are included in a reference:
Author: The individual(s) or group(s) responsible for creating the source
Date: The date a source was published
Title: The title of the work being cited
Petting away pre‐exam stress: The effect of therapy dog sessions on student well‐being
The handmaid's tale
Source: How access is provided to a cited work URL & DOI
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