Coordinating reference elements: author, date, title, and source - Formatting last impressions: reference list - Practicing safe cites: writing and citing sources

APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021

Coordinating reference elements: author, date, title, and source
Formatting last impressions: reference list
Practicing safe cites: writing and citing sources

APA organizes reference entries by groups and categories. Format your entry by duplicating the pattern of the sample in the group and category. It’s like grocery shopping. To find a can of soup, you look for the aisle with the “soup” sign and search the shelves for the kind of soup you’re looking for. APA’s groups, and the category of works and samples in each group, include the following:

· Textual works group: periodical articles, books, reference works, edited book chapters, journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, blogs, reports, gray literature, dissertations, and reviews of other works

· Data sets, software, and tests group: data sets, computer software, mobile apps, surveys, and polls

The term gray literature identifies reports that may or may not be peer-reviewed and includes grants, policy briefs, and press releases. A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data specific to a topic from a single source: prediction data from the National Weather Service, climate data, and Google trends. Data sets are a form of analytics.

· Audiovisual media: YouTube videos, speech audio recordings, podcast episodes, and PowerPoint slides

· Online media: social media, webpages, and websites

APA’s categories of groups and works contain materials common to graduate-level research (theses, scales and inventories, unpublished raw data, and unpublished and informally published works) that you may have occasional use for in your undergraduate research. A general sequential pattern for entering almost all elements of reference items is author, date, title, source, additional source information if available, and DOI or URL if available and applicable. Here is what the different elements look like individually and then as a reference item:

· Author(s): Scully, P. J., & Schwartz, D. W. (A comma precedes the ampersand.)

· Date: 2018

· Title: The long-term effects of music and learning: A study of prodigies

· Source: American Journal of Classical Musicians

· Additional source information: Volume 38, Issue 14

· Page numbers: 210—243

· DOI: https://doi.org/10.0000091-333

If you don’t like shopping in a grocery store for cans of soup, here’s a classroom-tested strategy: If you’re looking to format a webpage entry in the reference list, follow a model format of a webpage entry. If you’re looking to format a podcast entry, follow a model format of a podcast entry. Almost all APA sources of information include a variety of model reference entries. Numerous model entries are included at the end of this chapter.

But because APA reference entries have as many variations as there are paths to graduation, over-achievers like you need to understand the exceptions. APA identifies four elements for entering a source in the reference list: author, date, title, and source. Knowing the definitions of key elements helps you to address variations. For example, author can be defined as “producer” or “host.” The following sections examine how APA defines each element.

Author

APA defines author as the name of the person or group that created the work, such as the editor, co-producer, host, and staff. Here are some guidelines for formatting the author element in reference entries:

· Enter the author’s last name(s), followed by a comma and first and middle initials, followed by periods (Adams, J. L.). Spell out the full name of group authors followed by a period (Academy House Staff.).

Use one space between initials.

· Provide last names and initials for up to 20 authors. If the source has between two and 20 authors, use an ampersand (&) before the final author’s name. If the source has 21 or more authors, include the first 19 authors’ names, insert an ellipsis (but no ampersand), and then add the final author’s name.

· If an author is credited using the word with, include them with the reference item in parentheses: Davis, M. N. (with Torres, M. L.).

· If a work is designated “Anonymous,” use “Anonymous” as the author:

· If the author has one name (Tulip), use that name in the citation and reference:

· Avoid titles and academic ranks with names.

· If no author or group is listed, begin the reference entry with the title of the work:

Date

APA defines date as the time period in which the work was published and includes terminology such as this:

March 22, 2020; February 2020; Fall; 2020—2022

Additional formatting of author element entries

Here are some of the less obvious formatting guidelines that are specifically for the author element, in addition to the seventh edition upgrades (one even contradicts rules of standard English):

· Use a comma to separate an author’s initials from additional author names.

· Use the serial comma before an ampersand (&) with three or more authors: Tole, E. S., Carpenter, V. M., & Cromwell, H. W.

· Also, surprisingly, use the serial comma before an ampersand with two authors: Wagner, B. J., & Cunningham, J. L.

· Use one space after initials.

· Use commas to separate initials and suffixes: O’Day, P. R., Jr.

· If secondary authors are credited using “with,” include them in parentheses after the name: Donnelly, J. E. (with O’Keith, J. J.).

Most date element guidelines apply to graduate-level research projects, such as date designations for “summitted for publication,” “work in progress,” and “in press.” Here are a few guidelines for date elements that apply to you as an undergraduate scholar.

· Enclose the date entry in parentheses, followed by a period: (1989).

· When a last-update date is available for an online source, use the updated date rather than the overall website date.

· For frequently revised publications with changing dates, such as Wikipedia articles, a retrieval date is needed. When information changes less frequently, a retrieval date isn’t needed.

Title

APA designates a title as the name (title) of the work being cited. Titles are categorized into two general groups. See the section, “Capitalizing references,” later in this chapter that explains “title case” and “sentence case.”

· Works that stand independently: Books, journal articles, reports, videos, films, TV series, podcasts, social media, websites, and web pages

Guidelines for independent works include the following:

· Italicize the title.

· Use sentence case; capitalize only the first word (and the first word after a colon) and proper nouns.

· Works part of larger source: Periodical articles, book chapters, datasets, and media episodes

Guidelines for works part of a larger source include the following:

· Avoid italicizing the title and using quotation marks.

· Use sentence case; capitalize only the first word (and the first word after a colon) and proper nouns:

Successful homework strategies: Parents’ perspective.

· For works part of a larger source, use italics and sentence case. Use title case for the independent source:

For example, the part of a larger source journal article (The long-term effects of music and learning: A study of prodigies) appears in an independent journal (American Journal of Classical Musicians).

Source

APA defines source as the location where the cited work can be retrieved. Sources, similar to titles, are categorized into independent works and dependent works. If no source is available, such as when there are no available sources for texts, email, and classroom lectures, then no problem — use only the in-text citation and no reference entry.

Source elements are formatted according to their classifications:

· A source element of a reference with one part, such as a book source without a DOI, requires only the listing of the book publisher:

The long and short of it: DOIs and URLs

If you like technology choices (and you like to impress your friends with your technical knowledge), then APA offers you options on shortened URLs and DOIs. If you don’t know the meaning of those abbreviations (uniform resource locator and digital object identifier), then those options aren’t for you. If you follow the advice of good writers that shorter is better and you don’t like lengthy URLs and DOIs that don’t word-wrap neatly, then shortened versions can make your day.

Relatively new DOIs are replacing URLs. DOIs are expressed as alphanumeric (letters and numbers) strings that begin with “https://doi.org/” or “https://dx.doi.org” and are followed by the number 10. DOIs contain a prefix and suffix separated by a slash (backslash). Shortened DOIs are available from the International DOI Foundation (http://shortdoi.org/).

APA recommends shortened URLs for student papers written by undergraduates, which probably applies to almost anyone reading this book. Shortened versions aren’t recommended for scholars intending to publish their research because shortened links are not as stable.

· A source element of a book reference with a DOI requires a listing of two parts:

An eLocator is a contemporary equivalent of page numbers on many e-print documents. It appears as a combination of numbers and lowercase letters. When an eLocator is available, use it in place of page numbers in a citation and reference.