Skip to Main Content

APA Citation Guide - Lake County: Home

APA Style Guides

APA is the style manual of choice for the social and behavioral sciences, natural sciences, nursing, communications, education, business, engineering, and other fields. Updated in 2020, there are two key books in the Ivy Tech Lake County libraries.  See below the call number (location) for each book.  Let staff know if you would like to see either.  First is the Concise Guide to APA Style, designed for undergraduate student writing,  This easy-to-use pocket guide is adapted from the larger 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Pictures of both books are displayed here. 

Read on the right side the major changes from the previous edition, including Purdue's OWL guidelines chart, then choose which guides you wish to use from below:

GUIDES:  For examples how to cite the most common source types:  magazines, academic journals, books (including e-books), websites. or newspapers, begin by clicking on the specially created local Lake County guide APA SHORT SHEET,  shown in the left side below, produced in collaboration between English professor Christine Weatherby, and Library Director Barbara Minich.  For more detail and more source types, look in the middle section below at the APA Color-Coded Guide, or the four-page APA Citation Style Tip Sheet following it.

APA Short Sheet

This is a locally designed guide to the most common resource types:  books, popular magazines, academic journals, websites, newspapers.  It shows how to do citations for a reference page and in-text citations for each.

APA Concise Guide. 7th ed

    

CALL NUMBER:  808.0661 Con 2020

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 7th ed.

      

       CALL NUMBER: 808.06 APA 2020

APA Color-Coded Guide

APA Citation Style Tip Sheet

This guide by University of Southern Indiana library shows source types, in text fashion.  Reference page and in-text citation examples appear for each source type.

Sample Student paper

See below student paper excerpts with elements in basic APA style, including title page, in-text citations, and References page. Source:  Harker, D (2020). Documenting Sources in APA Style, 2020 Update.  Bedford/St. Martin's.

APA Title Page

A sample view of what the title page should look like, with color explanations.

Another example according to Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab) guide.

In-Text Citations: how to use

SIGNAL PHRASES:  These guide the reader to where the term paper writer has found his/her information.  The source author's last name, followed by the year that the author wrote the article or book is in parenthesis.  Some examples are:

             As Smith (2004) noted.....              According to Stevens (2002)......                     

BLOCK QUOTATIONS:  A block quotation is a direct quote from your source, that is 40 words or more.  It is indented and does not need quotation marks. 

Click on below link for many more signal phrases and see a sample block quotation.

APA Reference Page

A brief view of a couple of citations set up in a Reference Page, with instructions.

APA Style Guidelines Overview - by OWL

See this overview sheet for the main features of an APA paper, according to Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab)

APA 7th edition main features

APA 7th Edition - major changes

Punctuation and layout

  • Titles are no longer needed in the header. This include the Running Head on the title page. Page numbers are still needed in the upper right corner of every page. 
  • Headings are simplified. See this page of the APA website for details: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings
  • The 7th edition adds additional fonts: Calibri size 11pt, Arial 11pt, Lucida Sans Unicode 10pt, and Georgia 11pt in addition to Times New Roman 12pt.
  • Use one space after a period.

Citations

  • In-text citation is usually the author's name(s) followed by the year of publication.
  • Page numbers are only included IF there is a direct quotation from the source.
  • With in-text citations, any reference with more that three authors can now be shortened to the first author and the words 'et al'.

Reference Page

  • Website URLs no longer need to be preceded with “Retrieved from” unless there is also a retrieval date.
  • EBooks no longer require the type of eBook to be listed (e.g. PDF, Kindle etc)
  • Journal DOIs are now displayed as a doi.org URL instead of with the “DOI:” prefix.
  • The publisher location is no longer required for books or similar mediums.
  • Up to 20 authors can now be included in a reference list entry before needing to omit others with an ellipsis.

Bias-free language

  • Guidelines are being added to use bias-free language when referring to people or entities. This means using the word “they” or “their” instead of gender pronouns like “he”, “she”, “his” and “her”.

Sources Consulted

The creation of this APA libguide includes a new short sheet created by local Lake County staff:  English instructor Christine Weatherby and library director Barbara Minich.  We wish to acknowledge and thank Evansville library director Lenore Engler, Valparaiso library director Heather Ayres, and Indianapolis librarians Linda Judd and Melissa Stumpe for portions of their guides used here as well.