As a general rule, any sentence that includes quotations, dates, statistics, or other specific references or ideas must be followed by an in-line citation. That citation should be included in a reference page at the end of the document.
If you have never used APA before, please learn and practice before you submit your write-ups.
APA citations are usually taught in writing classes, but since you need them for this class and many students struggle with the concept, I am providing my own guidance here. The most important elements of APA formatting for this course are in-line citations and the References section.
Incorrect citations will earn deductions; a lack of citations when they are needed constitutes plagiarism, which is an extremely serious offense. You are responsible for ensuring that any ideas you borrow from other sources are correctly cited.
To avoid citing every sentence in a paragraph, review this portion of the instructions: https://blogs.umb.edu/amandapotasznik/assignments/how-to-write-a-weekly-write-up/#citations
In order to present lots of information from outside sources without repeating citations excessively, you are encouraged to paraphrase and combine bits of information when possible. Paraphrasing still requires in-line citations but it can reduce the number of repeated citations.
Choose your option:
- I want to automatically generate my citations and I want to watch a video of THIS professor showing exactly how to do it in the context of a monthly write-up.
- I can learn by seeing examples of correctly formatted work; from there I can decide to either manually generate my citations or use software to do it.
- I want start to finish written instructions of how to use in-line citations and reference sections. Note that in this course we don’t worry about page numbers in in-line citations since our primary sources are online articles that scroll constantly instead of delineating pages.
- I just need help with the References section for citing online articles.
I want the Zotero app shown in the tutorial.
Now prove you understood: take the citations quiz in Canvas until you get a score of 100%. Canvas > Modules > Pre-course required reading and assignments > Citation Workshop > Citation Quiz
Just because you cite a source correctly doesn’t mean you have strengthened your paper. In fact, using sources too heavily (especially in a one page paper) is a separate issue. This page has helpful guidance on when and how to incorporate sources.