This page will help you learn the basics of good research academic writing in in APA or MLA Styles.  The American Psychological Association (APA) style is a widely accepted format for writing research papers, particularly for social science manuscripts and theses.

Below you will find interactive tutorials to teach you to cite and list bibliographies (references) and avoid plagiarism.

• Two interactive tutorials that teach you how to avoid plagiarism and follow rules of academic integrity.
• Links to the APA Style Guide.
• Three interactive tutorials that allow you to locate the pieces of a citation for a book, article, and webpage.
• The format of three common APA citations to help you cite your sources.

Quick Reference: APA STYLE MANUAL – 6th Ed.

• http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/libraries/documents/lib-guides/apa-style-manual.pdf
• http://www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/laupuslibrary/upload/apa_style_guide_6th_ed_oct09.pdf
• http://www.stritch.edu/uploadedfiles/library/doing_research/citation_help/apastyleguide6.pdf

What is a citation?
It depends on what format you are trying. MLA, APA…there are a whole lot of formats for citations, and which one you use depends on the subject being researched. A citation is when one paper explicitly refers to another paper. Usually there is some kind of indication in the text of the paper, then the full reference is given in the bibliography.

For example:
“Previous work on analog wobulators revealed problems with calibration and precision [Tinker and Tailor, 1973].”

“Bibliography
14. Tinker, R.A. and Tailor, C.C. 1973. “Empirical evaluation of analog wobulators and mixometers.” Journal of Drastic Devices vol. 18, no. 3, pages 489-512.

Citation Management
For larger projects, there are tools that enable you to manage references, import citations from online databases and incorporate references into Word documents. For more information about these tools:

The Citation Builder is based on the following citation manuals:
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/citationbuilder/

• American Psychological Association 6th edition
• Modern Language Association 7th edition
• Modern Language Association 8th edition
• Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (author-date)
• Council of Science Editors, Name-Year (author-date)

Quick Citation Formatting
The Citation Builder is a quick and easy, fill-in-the-blank tool for creating single citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE formats. Copy and paste formatted citations into your document.
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/do/cite-sources

The Citation Builder is based on the following citation manuals:

• American Psychological Association 6th edition
• Modern Language Association 7th edition
• Modern Language Association 8th edition
• Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (author-date)
• Council of Science Editors, Name-Year (author-date)

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/citationbuilder/

Citation Style Guides
See these Style Guides for more detailed information on citing your sources:

• AMA — AMA Citation Guide

https://research.library.oakland.edu/sp/subjects/tutorial.php?faq_id=186

• APA — Purdue Guide

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/

• Chicago Manual of Style

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

• MLA — Purdue Guide

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Here is how to format some of the most common types of citations in APA style.

Article

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number (issue). doi:0000000/000000000000

Website

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from http://Web address

Book

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.