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.
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 (Nahasapeemapetilon & 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.]
At the end of a scholarly paper you will see a list of references used. This section has multiple names such as a reference section or a bibliography.
Here is some info regarding how to create this section in APA
Citing a Journal Article
Citing a journal article that has one author (with and without a DOI)
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy*
A DOI (digital object identifier) is the standard way that researchers share and link to articles. Including DOIs has become typical in APA for electronic articles.
DOIs are unique and persistent identifiers. Each DOI points to only one article. You can search DOIs in databases. DOIs are typically displayed within the article record.
Citing a journal article that has multiple authors
Author, A. A.. Bauthor, B.B., & Cauthor, C.C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy
Citing Books
One author
Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name.
Multiple authors
Author, A. A., Bauthor, B.B., & Cauthor, C.C. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name.
Books with multiple editions
Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (edition). Publisher Name.
Chapter an edited book*
Author's name(s). (Year of publication). Entry title. In Editor(s) (Eds.).Title of book (pages). Publisher.
*Example taken from the Purdue OWL Citation Guide
There are some free citation management software applications that will assist you with organizing and exporting citations.
You can learn more about those applications on this WSU guide. Such applications although helpful, do operate on a garbage in/garbage out principal. Those applications are:
The WSU Libraries does not endorse any one 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.
Below is some information on Zotero:
Here's the quick start guide link which will get you going with Zotero.
If you want to learn more about Zotero watch this in-depth 12:16 minute video from the University of North Carolina Park Library