APA format information

Education majors use APA (American Pyschological Association) format to look professional, to communicate important information, and helps avoid plagarism.

APA Basic Rules:

• everything must be double spaced and indent (one tab) the first line of every paragraph
• one inch margins on all 4 sides of your paper
• the only two fonts that are allowed are Times New Roman and Courier (size 12)
• use unbiased language- ex. when discussing gender you cannot pick just one gender use "they"

Citing Sources:

• Author (Date) or (Author, Date)
• when using a direct quote Author (Date) notes, "..." (p. #). or "..." (Author, Date, p. #).
• if the source has two authors, cite both names Author and Author (Date) or (Author & Author, Date)

electronic sources:

• if you have the option between html or PDF, always choose PDF because it will most likely be closer to the actual text
• also note the date you retrieved the source because the web is constantly changing
• if there are no page numbers use the paragraph symbol or "para."

block quotes:

• must be 40 words or more
• if the introduction to the quote is a complete sentence it is followed by a :
• if the introduction to the quote ends in the verb writes, claims, states, ect. it is followed by ,
• if the introduction to the quote ends in the word "that" it does not get any punctuation

References: aka works cited in MLA format

• alphabetize the list of references
• APA only uses intials instead of the author's first and middle name
• citing a periodical: Last name, FI. MI. (Date) Title of article: Subtitle of article. Title of Periodical, volume #(issue #), page #. doi: #

* where I bolded in "Title" and "Subtitle" are the only capital letters in the title of the article unless there is a proper noun in the title, the title of the periodical and the volume number must be italized, and doi stands for digital object identifier which is located on the hard copy of the periodical APA requires you to have the doi number.

• citing a book: Lastname, FI. MI. (Date). Title of work. Location: Publisher.
• citing a chapter in a book: Last name, FI. MI. (Date). Title of chapter. In FI. Lastname (Ed.), Title of book. (pp. #). Location: Publisher.

* if there is more then one editior then following the editors first initial and last name would be (Eds.) IMPORTANT: no matter what kind of source you are citing in APA, only the first letter of the title gets capitalized unless there is a proper noun in the title

• citing online periodicals: the same format as the hard copies of periodicals UNLESS the online version has no DOI: then it would still be the same format but where you put the doi # you would put the words Retrieved from source (fill in what source you found the periodical)
• citing an online document: Last name, FI. MI. (Date). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from source