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Basic Guide of APA Writing

  • Writer: Lay Koon Ng
    Lay Koon Ng
  • May 30, 2020
  • 2 min read

Course: ID Context 1

Week: 1-2

Title: Learning of APA formatting & Style

Definition of APA

The American Psychological Association (APA) citation style is the most commonly used format for manuscripts in the social sciences.

APA Regulates:

  • Stylistics

  • In-text citations

  • References

In-text Citations: Basics

  • In-text citations help readers locate the cited source in the References section of the paper.

  • Whenever you use a source, provide in parenthesis:

►the author’s name and the date of publication

►for quotations and close paraphrases, provide the author’s name, date of publication, and a page number


In-text Citations: Signal Words

  • Introduce quotations with signal phrases,

e.g. According to X. (2008), “….” (p. 3).

X. (2008) argued that “……” (p. 3).

  • Use such signal verbs as:

acknowledged, contended, maintained, responded, reported, argued, concluded, etc.

  • Use the past tense or the present perfect tense of verbs in signal phrases

In-text Citations: Formatting Quotations

When quoting, introduce the quotation with a signal phrase. Make sure to include the author’s name, the year of publication, the page number, but keep the citation brief do not repeat the information.

In-text Citations: Formatting a summary or paraphrase

Include the author’s name in a signal phrase followed by the year of publication in parenthesis.

When including the quotation in a summary/paraphrase, also provide a page number in parenthesis after the quotation:

Reference: Basic Element

Author - Who created the works?

Date - When was it published?

Title - What is the name of the work?

Source - Where was the work published?


Reference: Basic

  • Invert authors’ names (last name first followed by initials: “Smith, J.Q")

  • Alphabetize reference list entries the last name of the first author of each work

  • Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns. Do not capitalize the first letter of the second word in a hyphenated compound word.

  • Capitalize all major words in journal titles

  • Italicize titles of longer works such as books and journals

  • Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles or essays in the edited collection

Reference Page


  • Center the title (References) at the top of the page. Do not bold it.

  • Double-space reference entries

  • Flush left the first line of the entry and indent subsequent lines

  • Order entries alphabetically by the author’s surnames


* Notes are given by lecture *

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