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APA 7th Edition Style Guide

Correctly cite and reference resources in APA (7th Edition) Style.

How to Cite Other People's Work?

Parenthetical Citations

  • Example - A social constructivist approach is more effective than traditional pedagogy (Tan, 2018).

  • Include last name and year within the parentheses

 

Narrative Citations

  • Author's name as part of narrative:

    • Example - Lim (2019) reported that...

    • Include only the year within the parentheses


  • Author's name and year of publication are included as part of the narrative
    • Example - In 2020, Lim reported that... 
    • Do not add any in-text citations here but reference to this resource must be included in the bibliography

Parenthetical Citations

  • For work with 2 authors:

    • First and subsequent citations: Beginning teachers will benefit from professional development courses on improving classroom management skills (Low & Goh, 2011).

    • Note: Use "&" and not "and" for the in-text citation.


  • For work with 3 or more authors:

    • First and subsequent citations:  Malnutrition hampers concentration in the classroom (Wong et al., 2012).

    • Note: To prevent ambiguity, include all the authors' names if other works used are written by similar authors

 

Narrative Citations

  • Authors' names as part of narrative

    • For work with 2 authors as part of a narrative citation, include the author names in every citation

      • First and subsequent citations:  Chandran and Tan (2013) reported that..

    • ​For work with 3 or more authors, include the name of only the first author plus "et al." in every citation:

      • First and subsequent citations:  Wong et al. (2012) found that...

      • Note: To prevent ambiguity, include all the authors' names if other works used are written by similar authors


  • Authors' names and year of publication as part of narrative

    • Example: In 2013, Chandran, Loh, Atkinson, Chou and Tan reported that...

    • Note: In-text citation is not necessary

Parenthetical Citations

  • Two or more works by the same author(s)

    • From different years - Arrange by year of publication in the following order (first to last):

      • Works with no date to be reflected as n.d.

      • Works with a known date/year are to be sort by ascending order - e.g. 2019, 2020

      • In-press citations appear last

        • ​Example: Research from that era found a similar trend with regards to the development of early childhood curriculum (Ng, n.d., 2015, 2019, in press).


    • ​​From the same year - Arrange as per order in reference list (alphabetical order by title):

      • Works are to be differentiated by "a", "b" after the year (see example)

        • Example: Several studies found the theory to be inconclusive (Kim, 2013a, 2013b).

      • If multiple works have no date, they are to be reflected as "n.d.-a", "n.d.-b" etc

        • Example: A number of studies have correlated with our findings here (Wong, n.d.-a, n.d.-b)

 

Narrative Citations

  • Two or more works by the same author(s)

    • ​From different years - Arrange by year of publication in the following order (first to last):

      • Works with no date to be reflected as n.d.

      • Works with a known date/year are to be sort by ascending order - e.g. 2019, 2020

      • In-press citations appear last

        • ​Example: Huang ( n.d., 2015, 2019, in press) noted in multiple studies that the methodology was flawed.

Parenthetical Citations

  • Two or more works by the two or more author(s)

    • Arrange citations in alphabetical order:

      • Example: A number of studies found no correlation between the variables and the effectiveness of the curriculum (Lim, 2020; Mustafa, 2019; Kim & Whitehall 2017).

    • Works that are most relevant should be placed first within the in-text citation. Add a "see also" to the remaining works and sort them by alphabetical order

      • Example: Some studies have shown that the advantages of flipped learning makes it a superior choice for these forms of education scenarios (Rajah, 2020; see also Khong, 2019; Lannister, 2017).

 

Narrative Citations

  • Two or more works by the two or more author(s)

    • The order of the citations is dependent on the narrative of the sentence

      • Example: Rajah (2020), Khong (2011, 2016), and Stark (2014) observed that the effectiveness of the proposed changes...

How to Quote Sources Directly?

Quotation of Less than 40 Words

  • Incorporate quotation into text

  • Enclose with double quotation marks

  • Quotation in mid-sentence:

Referring to the online questionnaires on how senior citizens were adapting to the Internet, Goh et al. (1999) observed that the “investigators assumed the respondents to be in possession of the very same skill sets that their studies were supposed to measure” (p.268), pointing out that the surveys produced biased results in favour of a high level of digital skills.

  • Quotation at end of sentence:

Far from curtailing patrons’ freedom of choice, readers’ advisory services are set up with the intent “to suggest, rather than dictate, a range of possibilities; to support, rather than reform, reading interests” (Teo & Capaldi, 2014, p.14).

 

Quotation of 40 Words or More

  • Set quotation in a block without quotation marks

  • Indent block half inch from left margin

  • Indent first line of second and subsequent paragraphs an additional half inch

  • Place the period for the block quote before the author/date citation

  • See example below:


In the example that we would like to highlight, Seah deliberated on how cognitive load is effected by the choice of using either an open or a fixed search:

It has been suggested that the use of Ingwersen’s results to illustrate Bruner’s model is justified: In effect, the different search modes are different selection strategies. More precisely, the open search employs simultaneous scanning whereas the fixed search uses conservative focusing. Because the main difference between these two strategies is their cognitive load, it is reasonable to assume that the determinant of a librarian’s choice between open and fixed searches is the amount of cognitive load he is willing to bear. (Seah, 2014, pp. 72-73).