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APA: References

Citation Generators - A Warning!

There are several free online citation generators that will make your Works Cited or Reference pages for you. Beware that these do not always format your sources correctly (there is a reason they are free). If you choose to use one of these tools, use the tabs at the top of the screen to check that they are correct before submitting your assignment. You don't want to lose points on your assignment because the AI generators were wrong!

APA References

Your reference page is the list of all sources you used in your paper. The references follow a specific set of rules, here are the basics:

  • If the source has an author, this is always listed first in the reference.
  • Author names are always formatted as Lastname, comma, then their initials. Do not include full first names.
    • Commas are used the separate different authors if there is more than one author
    • When there is more than one author, you will always use the & symbol before the last author. Never use the word and in the list of author names.
    • Degrees or credentials, such as PhD, MSN, are not included.
  • The date always goes (in parenthesis) and is always the second item in the reference.
    • You usually only need a year, web pages and news articles will use the full date.
  • Book and article titles are written sentence style, which means you capitalize like you are writing a sentence.
    • Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in the title.
    • If you use a citation generator, they almost always get this wrong!
  • Titles of books, names of Journals and names of web sites are italicized.
  • If a source has a DOI or URL, then you need to include it in the reference. 
    • Do not put a period after a URL or DOI
    • Be sure to check assignment directions to see if you need a URL for database articles. 
  • Note where periods and commas separate pieces of information.

For examples on how to format the different types of sources, use the tabs at the top of the page. 

To see how to set up your reference page, see the Reference Page Format section.

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