APA Handouts Revised

Library Services has revised two of its American Psychological Association (APA) citation guides. The guides that have been updated are the APA Style Guide and the To Quote, Paraphrase or Block Quote? – APA Style. Both of these guides cover the sixth edition version of the citation style. Additionally, the What is Plagiarism? handout has also been revised.

APA STYLE GUIDE [PDF/DOCX versions]

The 12 page format has been retained, but some new examples of citations have been supplied—not all of which are in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition). Some of new and revised examples include:

• notes on Canadian legal documents
• dictionary entries
• basic web pages
• Facebook posts
• Twitter posts

TO QUOTE, PARAPHRASE OR BLOCK QUOTE? – APA STYLE [PDF/DOCX versions]

The document is largely unchanged, but the language/phrasing employed in the examples has been modified to be more consistent.

WHAT IS PLAGIARISM? [PDF/DOCX versions]

Though it is not strictly related to the APA style of citation, our What is Plagiarism? document is a complement to the aforementioned guides that not only outlines what constitutes plagiarism, but the consequences of doing so at Medicine Hat College.

You can download and view these and other guides by visiting the "How-to and Research Guides" section of the Library Services website.

In all cases, we strive for accuracy in these documents. If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please contact Library Services via email, instant messenger, text message (403.866.5872), telephone (403.504.3544), or in person.

APA Update: Wikis & Corrections

WIKI ENTRY UPDATE

The APA has clarified how to cite a wiki entry. Our APA Style Guide cited a wiki entry to conform to the online community standard. It has now been changed to conform to the method that is used for an online reference book.

Previous our entry looked like this (click image to enlarge):




Now it will be more correctly displayed as (click image to enlarge):



To cite the previous example in-text, it would appear as follows:

• . . . ("APA Style," 2009). OR
• The "APA Style" (2009) article suggests . . . .
  

If a single author is given, order your entry as follows:

• author > date of posting/update > article title (sentence case, normal font) > wiki name (sentence case, italicized; preceded by "In"--using a plain font) > date of retrieval and URL.

If no single author is given:

• Article title (sentence case, normal font) > date of posting/update > wiki name (sentence case, italicized; preceded by "In"--using a plain font) > date of retrieval and URL.

The corrected version of the guide will carry the revision date of: October 2009 [Rev. A]. To view the revised style guide, click here.

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GENERAL UPDATE TO PUBLICATION MANUAL

The APA has also posted its first list of corrections and clarifications to the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Click here to view the list.

Header and margin boundaries are still poorly defined by the manual and are inconsistently displayed in the sample papers. These concerns have not been addressed by the APA, so we continue to rely on the more clearly defined 5th edition header and margin boundaries.

APA Style Updates - October 2009

As we stated in earlier posts, the current 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Publication Manual) has a number of inconsistencies and oversights in it. We are trying to correct and update our guides as information becomes available from official APA sources—click here for past revisions. To this end, we have posted our latest revisions of the APA Style Guide, 6th ed. and the APA Sample Paper. You can download each by clicking the following links:

• APA Sample Paper [.docx version]
• APA Style Guide, 6th ed. [.docx version]

The To Quote, Paraphrase, or Block Quote? – APA Style guide remains unchanged.

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CHANGES MADE:

RUNNING HEAD
Previously it was documented that the running head would start on page 1 (title page) and appear on every succeeding page in the following format:

Running head: THIS IS MY ABBREVIATED ESSAY TITLE

This was incorrectly documented in the APA Publication Manual it should appear:

Page 1: Running head: THIS IS MY ABBREVIATED ESSAY TITLE
Succeeding pages: THIS IS MY ABBREVIATED ESSAY TITLE


FIGURES & TABLES
• Notes are now correctly double-spaced—not single-spaced.
• Notes for these sections indicate that tables can be single to double spaced.
• Figure label and caption/title of figures are supposed to follow the figure on a page—not precede it. Examples in both documents have been updated to reflect this clarification.
• The table example on page 8 of the sample paper remains double spaced; this is to demonstrate the spatial relationship between a heading and its associated information.

BLOG CITATION (p.9 of APA Style Guide, 6th ed.)
An example of how to cite a blog was added to the APA Style Guide, 6th ed. handout. The example is the first one at the top of page 9.

ANATOMY OF A REFERENCE (p.4 of APA Style Guide, 6th ed.)
For the journal example, a noted was added to direct readers to page 6 of the guide for more information on citing the electronic versions of journal articles.

MARGINS
It is still unclear what the exact parameters for the margins are. APA says that text appears within a 1 in. margin at each side of the page. The lack of clarity regards whether or not the running head and page number are inside the 1 in. margin (which would effectively push essay text to the 1.5 in. mark from the top edges of the pages). Adding to the ambiguous nature of margin parameters are the APA’s sample papers—where margins vary throughout the presentation. We are still relying on the more clearly define margin and header boundaries from the 5th edition manual. This could, however, change once the detail is clarified by the APA.

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If you have any comments, concerns, or questions regarding this latest round of amendments, please e-mail us at: reference@mhc.ab.ca.

The revised documents carry the October 2009 revision date.

For a complete list of all of our guides, click here.

APA Style Guide, 6th ed. - Corrections

A couple more minor revisions have been made to the APA Style Guide.

Pt. 1. FULL TEXT ARTICLE WITH DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)

This time a correction has been made to the "Full Text Article with Digital Object Identifier (DOI)" example. This is example three on page six of the guide.

The authors in the reference page column originally read as:

• Yu, H., Zhou, Y.-J., Li, G.-X., Zhang, G.-H., Liu, H.-L., Yan, . . . & Tong, G.-Z. (2009).

It now correctly reads as:

• Yu, H., Zhou, Y.-J., Li, G.-X., Zhang, G.-H., Liu, H.-L., Yan, L.-P., . . . Tong, G.-Z. (2009).

The sixth authors initials were not originally included and the ampersand (&) was not required.

REFERENCE PAGE CITATION:
To recap the display of authors names in the reference list (based on previous example):

1 AUTHOR:

• Yu, H. (2009).
  

2-7 AUTHORS:

• Yu, H., Zhou, Y.-J., Li, G.-X., Zhang, G.-H., Liu, H.-L., Yan, L.-P., & Liao, M. (2009).
  
• All authors will be listed in the citation, and the ampersand (&) will be placed between the second last and last authors' names.

8 OR MORE AUTHORS:

• Yu, H., Zhou, Y.-J., Li, G.-X., Zhang, G.-H., Liu, H.-L., Yan, L.-P., . . . Tong, G.-Z. (2009).
• If you have eight or more authors: list the first six authors, use an ellipsis (. . .), and then list the last author.

PARENTHETICAL CITATION:
How will these look in-text ? [Paraphrase example.]

1 AUTHOR:

• . . . (Yu, 2009). OR Yu's (2009) study found . . . .
• You will use this form every time you reference this work.

2 AUTHORS:

• . . . (Yu & Zhou, 2009). OR Yu and Zhou's (2009) study found that . . . .
• You will use this form every time you reference this work.

3-5 AUTHORS:

• FIRST USE: . . . (Yu, Zhou, & Li, 2009). OR Yu, Zhou, and Li's (2009) study found . . . .
• SUBSEQUENT REFERENCES: . . . (Yu et al., 2009). OR Yu et al. (2009) found that . . . .
• If you have 3-5 authors list them all for the first reference, and use et al. after the first author's name in subsequent parenthetical references.

6 OR MORE AUTHORS:

• . . . (Yu et al., 2009). OR Yu et al. (2009) found that . . . .
• In this case, you will use the et al. after the first author's surname for each and every case.

For more information on how to provide author (or editor-in-place-of-author) information in the reference list, see section 6.27 (p. 184) of the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; for parenthetical referencing, see Table 6.1 (p. 177) of the aforementioned work.

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Pt. 2. EPISODE FROM A TELEVISION SERIES

Example 2 on page 7 was also corrected. In the "Episode from a Television Series" example, the episode title was incorrectly displayed as: Plato's Stepchildren; it has been amended to the correct: Plato's stepchildren. The program name was also incorrectly displayed as: Star Trek, it too was corrected and now displays: Star trek.

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The revised guide has been posted and will carry the designation August 2009 [Rev. B].

For additional modifications made to the style guide, select the "Revisions" tag in the Labels section below.

APA Style Guide, 6th ed. - Minor Revisions

A couple of minor clarifications/corrections were made to the library's APA Style Guide. The alterations are both on page 7 of the guide and explanations are as follows:

EPISODE FROM A TELEVISION SERIES

• The producer was originally listed as, "Fred Freiberger." It now displays the correct method which is: "F. Freiberger."
• Explanation: The given/first name of the producer is not required; the abbreviation is sufficient.

CORPORATE REPORT, GOVERNMENT AUTHOR

• The original reference was problematic because the document in question could be classified as either a report (i.e., gray literature) or as a regular annual release (i.e., periodical). Depending on your interpretation, the title could either appear as: Canada Health Act annual report 2007–2008 (book/report format) or as: Canada Health Act Annual Report 2007–2008 (periodical format). To simplify the example, a different government publication/report from the same department was selected.

The guide will continue to carry the revised date of August 2009, but [Rev. A] has been added to the date for distinction purposes. You can download either version using the following links:

• APA Style Guide [PDF]
• APA Style Guide [DOCX]

For more guides related to APA, click here.

If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please direct them to the Information Desk in the Vera Bracken Library (e-mail: reference@mhc.ab.ca).