APA 7th Citation Guide

We took great care to ensure that the examples in this Guide conform to the guidelines set out in the Seventh Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. However, the Style Guides are open to interpretation. For further guidance, please consult the 7th ed. Publication Manual of the APA manual or authoritative web resources by APA Style. If in doubt, check with your professor.

Please send any feedback or corrections to your home campus library. Either:

You need to acknowledge your sources:

• to give credit to the work and ideas of other authors
• to allow the reader to check that what you are claiming is correct
• to show that you have read and understood the research published in your area of study
• to lend authority to what you are writing
• to strengthen your argument
• to support your own ideas
• to provide details or background to what you are writing
• to provide interest

You must acknowledge and cite your sources. This is important to avoid plagiarism, whether or not you use the author’s own words.

Plagiarism occurs when you use other people’s ideas, words or data as if they were your own. Deliberate plagiarism is a serious act of academic misconduct.

You should acknowledge your sources whenever you use a source of information:

• as your inspiration
• as the source of a theory, argument or point of view
• for specific information such as statistics, examples or case studies
• for direct quotation (using the author's exact words)
• to paraphrase or summarize an author's work

What is the difference between a 'Reference List' and a 'Bibliography'?

Reference List - all the references that you have cited in your assignment, report, essay or article.

Bibliography - all of the references that you have read, whether or not they are cited in your assignment.

When you are taking something from another source, you are taking it out of its original context and putting it into a new context - your own assignment.  You must make sure it fits properly into this new context. This means:

• it must be relevant to your argument
• it must join neatly with what comes before and after
• it must make logical and grammatical sense