The purpose of citation within a manuscript is to document statements made from other literature (APA, 2001). Every citation within a paper must be listed in the References section and every reference listed must be cited in the body of the manuscript. References should be chosen carefully to provide sufficient support for the paper.
Proper citation of other sources is extremely important to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else's language, ideas, or other original material without acknowledging its source. (Click here for more information.) Any idea is not your original idea must provide the citation of the original source. You must cite a source for quotes, paraphrases, using an idea that has already been expressed, and for individuals who had a significant impact on developing your ideas (plagiarism.org). Plagiarism is fraud and must be avoided at all costs. For more information on plagiarism, click here.
Proper citation is also important for two other reasons (plagiarism.org). First, citations allows other readers to find other literature. If a reader is interested in a statement that you made, they can use the citation to find the original paper and read more about that statement. Second, citations also show that you are familiar with other relevant literature and the citations provide support for your ideas. Therefore, accurate citation is important to help the reader find your original sources for their own benefit and to demonstrate the quality of your work.
There are three ways to include other research papers into your work. (For more information, go to Purdue's OWL Writing Lab.)
- Quoting. First, another's work can be quoted by repeating the original source word for word. Quoting an article will be more fully explained in the next tutorial.
- Paraphrasing. When paraphrasing, a short passage from another paper is rephrased in your own words. For example, the APA Manual states "Authors should choose references judiciously and must include only the sources that were used in the research and preparation of the article." This statement was paraphrased above with the statement "References should be chosen carefully to provide sufficient support for the paper." Paraphrases must be cited to give credit to the original author.
- Summarizing. A summary includes only the main ideas of another work written in your own words. For example, this entire tutorial summarizes the main points of the APA Publication Manual. The summary of another work also must be cited to give credit to the original author.
In conclusion, every sentence in a paper that is not your original idea must be cited. The following provide guidelines on citing within the body of a paper.
Guidelines
APA uses author surname and the year of publication to cite. Place a comma between the names and the full-stop at the end of the citation.
- Typical citation. Typically, include author surname(s) and year in brackets like this: (Yount, 1996).
- Multiple authors. For multiple authors of one source, put a comma between the surnames and use the ampersand sign: (Richmond, Robinson, & Sachs-Israel, 2008).
- Three or more authors. When three or more individuals authored a paper, list all authors the first time the work is cited (Richmond, Robinson, & Sachs-Israel, 2008). For every subsequent citation, list the first author only and substitute "et al." for the remaining authors (Richmond et al., 2008).
- Author name in narrative. Sometimes the author's name appears in the narrative, so only include the year in brackets: Commeyras and Inyega (2007) reviewed reading instruction...
- Two or more works within the same parentheses. When multiple sources are to be cited for the same statement, order the citations in the same order that they appear in the References list. This means the citations are to be alphabetized. Separate citations with a semicolon: (Henniger, 2005; Labbo & Field, 1998).
- Secondary sources. When unable to retrieve the original source, cite as follows: (Agak, 1995, as cited in Commeyras & Inyega, 2007). In this instance, Agak (1995) is the original source, but I read about their work in Commeyras & Inyega (2007). Commeyras & Inyega's reference will appear in the references section.
Examples
- Reading multicultural literature enhances the self-esteem of children from diverse backgrounds (Henniger, 2005).
- Attitudes toward reading will be assessed by a modified version of the Elementary Reading Attitudes Survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990).
- Krashen (1994) stated that reading can be an enjoyable pastime.
- A word list will be developed based off of the most frequent English words from Dolch's (1936) sight-word list.
- According to constructivism, the goal of learning is to help students develop a meaningful and practical understanding of the content (Mazzoni & Gambrell, 2003; Perkins, 1991).
- Early experiences reading storybooks at home has a positive effect on subsequent literacy skills (Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995). Likewise, teachers should also read storybooks aloud at school to improve reading achievement (Bus et al., 1995).
- In sub-Saharan Africa, voluntary reading is related to higher academic achievement in reading and other academic subjects (Agak, 1995, as cited in Commeyras & Inyega, 2007).
Practice
For each statement below, include the proper citation. The beginning of the reference is listed below.
- The label mental model refers to these representations of a situation maintained in an active state in working memory when solving a problem _______
- Halford, G. S. (1993). Children's understanding...
- ________ also conducted a similar study with additional items that were hypothesized to measure four levels of quantitative conceptual structures.
- Case, R., & Okamoto, Y. (1996). The role...
- The influence of verbal abilities on an assessment of an unrelated cognitive process is a pervasive source of construct-irrelevant variance ________
- Haladyna, T. M., & Downing, S. M. (2004). Construct-irrelevant variance...
- Most early elementary students have not developed the strategy of verbally labeling an object when attempting to remember it ___________
- Palmer, S. (2000). Working memory...
- Previous research has established that students in kindergarten through second grade tend to place greater demands on spatial resources in working memory when solving arithmetic items ______. On the other hand, older elementary students tend to use both spatial and verbal resources ______ . (Cite the same source for both blanks.)
- McKenzie, B., Bull, R., & Gray, C. (2003). The effects of phonological...
- Measurement experts recognize the central importance of cognitive theory in test development _________. (Cite all three sources here.)
- Floyd, R. G. (2005). Information-processing approaches...
- Embretson, S., & Gorin, J. (2001). Improving construct validity...
- Mislevy, R. J., Steinberg, L. S., & Almond, R. G. (2003). On the structure...
- Similar studies have also been conducted with items that reflect the various levels of conceptual structures in the domains of time and handling money _________
- Griffin, S., Case, R., & Sandieson, R. (1992). Synchrony and asynchrony...However, you read about this study in the article Case, R., & Okamoto, Y. (1996). The role...
- This hypothesis is similar to _____ suggestion that reasoning ability may consist of the ability to map one representational system onto another.
- Halford, G. S. (1993). Children's understanding...
Answers
- (Halford, 1993).
- Case and Okamoto (1996) also conducted...
- (Haladyna & Downing, 2004).
- (Palmer, 2000).
- First blank: (McKenzie, Bull, & Gray, 2003). Second blank: (McKenzie et al., 2003).
- (Embretson & Gorin, 2001; Floyd, 2005; Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 2003).
- (Griffin, Case, & Sandieson, 1992, as cited in Case & Okamoto, 1996). Case & Okamoto only will be listed in the References section.
- ...similar to Halford's (1993) suggestion...
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