general citation guidelines
Citations will differ according to the nature of the material that needs to be cited. For example, instances of quoted words or phrases need to be cited in a slightly different manner than that of paraphrased or summarized material. The following are some general guidelines that should always be followed, regardless of what is being cited:
To maintain readability, APA style specifies citing only the last name of the author(s), and the publication date (and page numbers for direct quotations) in the text to allow the reader to find the related reference in the Reference section at the end of your paper. You may either write the author's into the text, or include them in a parenthetical citation. The date should always occur in parentheses. The following are both acceptable citations:Varhagen and Didgeon (2002) found that student's use of a web based tutorial...
Research on student's use of web based tutorials (Varnhagen & Didgeon, 2002)...
One dated citation of each source is required in each paragraph. Furthermore, the date should be left out of subsequent citations of a particular source within that same paragraph. For example:
Research on students' use of Web based tutorials (Varnhagen & Digdon, 2002)...Varnhagen and Digdon found...
If a source has more than two authors, all authors' last names (no first names or initials!) should be included the first time that source is cited. All subsequent citations of that source should include only the last name of first author, and an abbreviation of all other authors, in the form of "et al." Note that "et al." should always be followed by a period.
FIRST CITATION: Schimel, Greenberg and Martens (2003) studied the projective functions of defence...
SUBSEQUENT CITATIONS: ...according to Schimel et al. (2003),...
