Writing issues: Citations

Several students have asked me to run through the APA rules for citations. Everything I am talking about today is in the APA Manual- see section 6.11. 

All references cited in text must appear in the reference section of the paper. All references listed must have a citation in the text. An easy way to check this is to print out your reference list and cross off each one as you read the paper (this is what I will do as your reader). 

If you have one author you give the author's last name and year. In text it would be: Smith (2012) stated… Alternatively, it could be done in parentheses: The fear of pencils is epidemic (Smith, 2012) 

Tricky aspect: If you give the citation multiple times in a paragraph in the text (not in parentheses), you are required to give the year once. However, if you just give the citations in parentheses, it must always have the year included.

If you have 2 authors, cite both names every time you cite. When there are 3-5 authors cite all authors the first time cited, and then use just the first author's name, followed by et al. 

Examples:

Johnson, Palmer, Smith, and Joseph (2010) reported …. (first citation)

Johnson et al. (2010) stated... (subsequent citations)

The fear of pencils has been studied extensively (Johnson, Palmer, Smith, & Joseph, 2010)

The fear never abates (Johnson et al., 2010) 

Tricky aspects: In the text of the sentence – use “and”

             Example:  Blackburn and Dulmas (2007) stated…. 

In parentheses use “&”

             Example: there are many older adults (Blackburn & Dulmas, 2007) 

When a work has 6+ authors, cite only the name of the first author followed by et al.

For example, you have the following reference:

MacDonald, Jones, Smith, Johnson, Liverwurst, George, Killary, & Donegal (2012) – it would always be cited as MacDonald et al. (2012) 

Tricky aspect: If you have a work with 6+ authors, that would shorten to the same form, you should list as many authors as needed to distinguish the 2 references. 

Examples:

MacDonald, Jones, Smith, Johnson, Liverwurst, George, Killary, & Donegal (2012)

MacDonald, Jones, Smith, Ludicrous, Liverwurst, George, Killary, & Sassafras (2012) 

In text, you would cite them as

MacDonald, Jones, Smith, Johnson, et al. (2012)

MacDonald, Jones, Smith, Ludicrous, et al. (2012)

(Note the comma before the et al. in this case) 

If you have works with authors of the same last name, but different first name, with the same year, you have to differentiate them.

Examples:

Keith, H. (2012). Art and the immigrant. NY: Sage.

Keith, M. (2012). Psychology of immigration. Immigration Forum, 3, 26-32. 

Citations would be:

The study of art and the immigrant has only recently been addressed (H. Keith, 2012; M. Keith, 2012)… 

Finally, a last picky detail to keep in mind:

When using et al. there is not a comma before it (exception with 6+authors as detailed above). So Johnson et al. (2000) has no comma after the name. 

I strongly suggest copying Table 6.1 in the APA manual and keeping it nearby when you are writing. It lays out everything I have discussed above. 

Next time, we will take a look at a new requirement for dissertation students. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Send me an email with your ideas. leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu