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 work by one author
Example:
Quimby (2000) compared monorail systems
In a recent study of monorail systems (Quimby, 2000)
In 2000 Quimby compared monorail systems
One work by multiple 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)
When a work has three, four, or five 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:
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
Citing Podcasts
When citing a podcast, you should know:
In-text citation of a podcast:
Direct Quote:
(Hudson, 2022, 5:28)
(LastName, Year, Timestamp)
Paraphrase:
(Hudson, 2022)
Citing a podcast in your reference section:
Note: This library guide does not indent the second line of the citation but you should.
LastName, FirstInitials of host or producer. (Title of Host or Producer). (Date of posting/broadcast). Title of podcast episode (Episode number). [Audio podcast episode]. In Title of podcast which is italicized. Production Company Name. URL where the podcast can be located via the production company:
Wimmer, C.(Host). (2022, December 14). The Nez Perce War: The medicine line (No. 5). [Audio podcast episode]. In Legends of the old west. Black Barrel Media. https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/
In the following example, there isn't a production company associated with the podcast:
Hudson, T. (Host). (2023, January 19). Advances in soil health at SoilCon 2023, with Molly McIlquham (No. 98). [Audio podcast episode]. In Art of Range. Art of Range and Tip Hudson. https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-98-advances-soil-health-soilcon-2023-molly-mcilquham
There are several free citation management software applications. These applications will help you organize, share, import, and export citations. These applications 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.
You can learn more about those applications on this WSU guide. Such applications although helpful, do operate on a garbage in/garbage out principal.
To download these applications, or plugins, follow these links:
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.
Although I use all three applications, I tend to use Zotero the most.
Here's the quick start guide link which will get you going with Zotero.