The American Psychological Association citation style, or APA, is an extremely popular citation style. APA is one of the easier to learn citations. Learning APA will also make learning other more specialized citation styles simpler.

Within your papers, you will use both in-text citations and citations in your reference section at the end of your paper.

Below are some useful links that will assist you with APA citations. These links provide information regarding how to cite a myriad of different resources.

APA Style Guide (from the The American Psychological Association) - A thorough resource describing virtually every aspect of APA. 

Purdue University Online Writing Lab - Although this website has started to utilize advertisements and pop-ups, it's still probably the best APA resource online. 

In-text Citations are the citations that happen within the body of your paper.

Here are some different ways to create in-text citations.

One author
Example:

Quimby (2000) compared monorail systems

In a recent study of monorail systems (Quimby, 2000)

In 2000 Quimby compared monorail systems

Two authors
When a work has two authors, always cite both names every time the reference occurs in text.
Examples:

As Smithers and Skinner (1993) demonstrated

...as has been shown (Quimby & Ormand, 1989)

Three or more authors
Cite all the authors the first time the reference occurs.

In subsequent citations, include only the surname of the first author followed by et al. (including the period)
Cite the year if it is the first citation of the reference within a paragraph.
Example:

Hibbert, Rivera, Monroe, Foster, Zweig, and Colossus (1994) found
[Use as first citation in the text]

Hibbert et al. (1994) found
[Use as subsequent first citation per paragraph thereafter.]

The reference list (or reference section) of your paper contains a list of all of the resources that you cited. Here's some things to keep in mind when creating a reference list:

• Arrange the list alphabetically by the last name of authors.
  • In the reference list itself, give the names of all authors. Optionally, if the paper has more than six authors, the rest may be abbreviated to 'et al.'
• Two or more articles by the same author (or authors) are listed chronologically.

Citing Journals

Example of Journal Article Citations (with and without DOI)

Schematic of a Journal Article Citation

Citing Magazine Articles

Citing Books, Bulletins, or Reports

Examples of Book, Bulletin, and Report Citations

Schematic of a Book, Bulletin, or Report Citation 

Citing Chapters Within Edited Books, Bulletins, and Reports

Examples of Citing Individual Chapters within an Edited Book

Schematic of a Chapter Citation Within a Book, Bulletin, or Report

Example of a Reference List Utilizing Multiple Types of Resources

There are several free citation management applications which will help you organize, share, import, and export citations. They also work with Microsoft Word to allow you to easily cite sources and create reference sections within Word.

The most popular of these applications are Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote. There are desktop and online versions of all three.

Follow the links below to learn more about this applications or to download them.

• Zotero
  • Zotero plugin for Microsoft Word
  • Zotero plugin for Chrome browser (for easily importing citations)
• Mendeley
  • Mendeley plugin for Microsoft Word
  • Mendeley plugin for Chrome browser (for easily importing citations) 
• EndNote (limited use for free subscription) 
  • EndNote plugin for Microsoft Word
  • EndNote plugin for Chrome browser (for easily importing citations) 

The WSU Libraries do not endorse any particular citation management application. That said, from experience, I've found there to be a little less of a learning curve with Zotero and Mendeley as opposed to EndNote.