APA citation basics

When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998), and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.

If you are referring to an idea from another work but NOT directly quoting the material, or making reference to an entire book, article or other work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication and not the page number in your in-text reference. All sources that are cited in the text must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.

In-text citation capitalization, quotes, and italics/underlining

• Always capitalize proper nouns, including author names and initials: D. Jones.
• If you refer to the title of a source within your paper, capitalize all words that are four letters long or greater within the title of a source: Permanence and Change. Exceptions apply to short words that are verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs: Writing New Media, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

  (Note: in your References list, only the first word of a title will be capitalized: Writing new media.)

• When capitalizing titles, capitalize both words in a hyphenated compound word: Natural-Born Cyborgs.
• Capitalize the first word after a dash or colon: "Defining Film Rhetoric: The Case of Hitchcock's Vertigo."
• Italicize or underline the titles of longer works such as books, edited collections, movies, television series, documentaries, or albums: The Closing of the American Mind; The Wizard of Oz; Friends.
• Put quotation marks around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles, articles from edited collections, television series episodes, and song titles: "Multimedia Narration: Constructing Possible Worlds"; "The One Where Chandler Can't Cry."

Reference

Paiz, J., Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., . . . Keck, R. (Eds.). (2013, March 1). In-Text citations: The basics. Retrieved March 18, 2013, from Purdue Online Writing Lab website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/