If you have spent any amount of time writing papers for your university social sciences courses, you have probably had to learn a thing or two about APA citation.
Contrary to popular opinion, APA does NOT stand for A Pain in the A**. Though it may seem so.
Rather, APA stands for American Psychological Association. This group represents the largest professional organization of psychologists in North America with 137,000 members (or so says Wikipedia).
As a publisher of a multitude of scientific journals, the APA has developed a style guide that is used by researchers, academics, students, and publishers in the social sciences.
Since you’re reading this blog post, someone probably told you to use APA citation in your work too.
At first, APA rules can seem cumbersome and confusing. However, learning how to use APA citation isn’t so bad once you get used to the basics.
This handy APA Citation Made Simple infographic can help you make sense of it all. The graphic covers the basic elements of writing APA in-text citations and corresponding reference list entries. We’ll cover the following information:
- Identify the source type. Is your source a book? a web page? a journal? a magazine? or something else entirely? You have to know this before you cite!
- Plug in your information. It’s important to know exactly what elements to include in your reference list, which words should be capitalized and italicized, and where to put your punctuation.
- Add to your reference list. Remember to build your references as you write, and always list them alphabetically by the first word in the entry.
- Create the in-text citation. It sounds more complicated than it is! Follow these simple steps to give credit where credit is due (no matter how many authors you have in your source!)
- Additional resources. There are several apps that help you build your reference list and generate citations. I give you the low-down.
For a more detailed explanation of this graphic, I recommend reading How to Write APA Citations in 4 Easy Steps.
And now, without further ado…
APA Citation Made Simple (Infographic)
