APA Style (Citations) - ANS112 - Ethics and Law for Pet Care Professionals - Shaw - NSCC Library at North Shore Community College

Skills - What is a citation?

What is a citation and why do we use them? NCSU Libraries explain in this short 3 minute video Citation: A (Very) Brief Introduction.

Skills - What must be cited?

Proper attribution of a source must be given if you are:

(1) directly quoting a source (online document, video transcript, interview, statistics, tables, charts, etc…),

(2) paraphrasing a source (i.e. using the words or ideas of the creator and rephrasing them using your own words and structure), or

(3) summarizing a source (taking talking points from a source, reducing content).

Information that is considered common knowledge does not need to cited. Common knowledge can be a difficult term to identify, especially when you begin to delve deeper into research within a specific discipline. Review this page on Common Knowledge from the Yale University Writing Center that discusses the ambiguity of the term and how it is important to look at the context in which the information is being delivered or shared to determine whether or not a source would be common knowledge (foundational knowledge) to its audience.

Resources - APA Websites

Here are several recommended websites for assistance with APA Style:

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has produced an APA Formatting and Style Guide that can help with APA guidelines, in-text citations, formatting a paper, and citing tables & figures.

Diane Hacker's Research and Documentation Online can also help with your list of references, in-text citations, and includes a sample APA research paper.

The APA Style website, which includes quick reference guides and tutorials, and APA Style Blog that provides answers to uncommon questions, are two sites produced by the American Psychological Association.