When writing academic papers or reports, international students often need to cite the work of others, which requires following the APA citation format, which is the American Psychological Association (APA) format. This citation format is divided into two main sections: the literature citation and the reference section. A literature citation is a direct quotation of someone else’s ideas, arguments, data, etc., in an article; this is done to help the reader better understand the content of the article and to respect the intellectual property rights of others. The references section, on the other hand, lists the details of all the cited literature at the end of the article, including author, title, publication, year of publication, page number and so on.
The specific rules of APA citation format are as follows:
1. literature citation in the paper:
– Directly cite the author’s name: Use the “(author’s name, year)” format. For example: “(John Doe, 2020) states that…”
– Cite research findings or arguments: use the “(author’s name, year) states that…” format. format. For example: “(John Doe, 2020) states that…”.
– One author: If there is only one author, you can omit the year and just use the “(author’s name) states that…” format. format. For example, “(John Doe) notes that…”.
– Multiple authors: If there are more than two authors, add “and” or “and other authors” between their names. For example, “(John Doe, Jane Doe, and Tom Doe, 2020) noted that…”
– Authors are organisations, groups or units: if the citation is from an organisation, group or unit, you can use the “(name of organisation, year) states that…” format. For example: “(World Health Organization, 2020) states that…”.
– Unattributed author: If the cited document does not have explicit author information, you can use the format “(Unattributed author, year) states that…” format. For example, “(unspecified author, 2020) states that…”
2. Reference section:
– Article number: If the article has its own number, such as a journal paper, you need to use that number in the reference and add the appropriate abbreviation when citing. For example, “(1) states that…” .
– Details of the article: In the references section, you need to list the details of the article, including the author’s name, title of the article, name of the journal, year, volume number, page number, and so on. For example, “(John Doe, 2020, “Title of the Article”, Journal Name, vol. 1, pp. 1-10) states that…” .
– Different types of citations: in APA format, different citation formats need to be used depending on the type of literature. For example, for a book citation, the author’s name needs to be followed by the title of the book, the publisher, the year, and other information. For example, “(John Doe, 2020, “Title of the Book”, Publisher, Year) states that…” . For web citations, use the “Web” format, followed by the URL and date. For example, “(Web, www.example.com, 2020) states that…” .”.
If international students need to use the APA citation format, they can refer to the above rules. In addition, if you have questions about APA formatting or need further guidance, you can refer to the official guidelines of APA formatting or use the APA format generator to generate the citation format.
