APA Documentation: Apply It

  • Describe general APA formatting and guidelines
  • Identify the parts of APA in-text citations
  • Recognize and create correct entries for an APA References page
  • Describe APA formatting for the title page and headers

APA In-Text Citations

Let’s review how to create an APA style in-text citation using the example below:

Imagine that you’re using APA style and have the APA style guide rules nearby (or another site explaining APA in-text citations). In your psychogeography paper, you want to quote the authors of the book The Experience of Nature, by Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, which was published in 1989. What you want to quote is from page 38 of the book.Here’s what you want to quote:

  • “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked.”

Skim the headings in the style guide to remind yourself of what its rules concern.

Since it has rules about the length of quotations, you count the number of words in what you want to quote and find that your quote has 38, which is within the range for short quotations (less than 40), according to the APA style guide. According to the rule for short quotations, you see that you’re supposed to introduce the quote by attributing the quote to the author (last name only) and adding the publication date in parentheses. You write:

  • According to the Kaplans (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked.”

Then you notice that the example in the style guide includes the page number on which you found the quotation. It appears at the end of the quote (in parentheses and outside the quote marks but before the period ending the quotation). So you add that:

  • According to the Kaplans (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked” (p. 38).

You’re feeling pretty good, but then you realize that you have overlooked the rule about having multiple authors. You have two and their last names are both Kaplan. So you change your sentence to:

  • According to Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked” (p. 38).

So you have your first in-text citation for your final product:

  • According to Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), “The way space is organized provides information about what one might want to do in that space. A relatively brief glance at a scene communicates whether there is room to roam, whether one’s path is clear or blocked” (p. 38).
Review and practice some of the APA formatting guidelines for in-text citations in the following exercise.