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9.6: How to Cite Your Sources- Avoiding Plagiarism

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    Learning Objectives

    At the end of this section, the learner will:

    • Explain the difference between a reference and a citation
    • Utilize resources to create accurate citations and references

    Citations and References

    After reading about academic integrity, you may feel nervous about unintentionally committing plagiarism. However, you can avoid plagiarism by giving credit where credit is due, by using citations and references. If you use an idea from a source, you must cite it.

    What is a citation or reference? The terms are often used interchangeably; however, a citation is often included in the text of your writing (often referred to as an in-text citation). A reference tells your reader what sources you used in your writing. In APA, you would collect your references on a page called References. Other citation styles may call this a "works cited" page or a "bibliography." This generally includes pieces of information such as the title, author, and year of publication. References and citations are highly formatted, listing each piece of information in a specific order. The formatting used for citations and references varies depending on what field you are studying. For example, Nursing, History, and English all use different methods or style books.

    APA

    The American Psychological Association (APA) shares its guidelines for citations in its APA Publication Manual. APA is the citation format nursing students are required to use. For more information, visit the APA Style Blog.

    APA, like other styles, has a specific anatomy to the way that citations and references should look. The current style guide, as of 2024, is the 7th edition. All citation styles are updated regularly and so the style may change. In-text citations will always include the author's name, the date of the publication and a page number, when available. If there is no author, you may use the title of the article or book instead. Be aware that the author/creator may not be a specific person. For example, a government website often doesn't have an author's name so you would use the governmental department.

    References use a specific format as well. In APA style, the author's first and middle names are never used. Only initials are used. If there is more than one author, use an ampersand (that's the "and" symbol) between authors. If there are 3 names use commas between the first two names and then use an ampersand. Unlike other citation styles, you use all the authors in the reference, at least until you get to 20 authors. While references get alphabetized, it is important not the change the order of the authors inside the reference itself. It's important to note also, that the only words capitalized in a title are the first word in the title, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns.

    A sample reference for a book looks like the following.

    Author last name, first initial. second initial. (year). Title of book. Publisher.

    DiGregorio, S. (2023). Taking care: The story of nursing and it's power to change our world. Harper.

    A sample reference for a journal article looks like this:

    Author last name, first initial, second initial (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. DOI [doi.org]

    Bijjaly, S. T., & Saunders, L. (2021). Soft skills teaching by top-ranked U.S. Nursing faculty. Journal of Nursing Education, 60(8), 437-443. http://

    dx.doi.org.bakersfieldcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.3928/01484834-20210722-04

    A sample webpage looks like this:

    Author last name, first initial, second initial (or group name). (year, month, day). Title of page. Website name. URL

    Jillings, B. (2023, October 3). Nursing smart goals: How to set these goals. AMN Healthcare. AMNhealthcare.com [www.amnhealthcare.com]

    how-to-set-smart-goals-for-nursing/

    Do you see how all of the references above are similar? Besides giving credit to the authors of the sources you use in your papers, references also give your reader enough information to find your sources if they are interested.

    APA Help

    • For information on using APA, you can visit the following pages. If you don’t have easy access to the most current APA Style Manual, you may find it useful to bookmark the information below for easy reference:

    Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers access to a FREE Online Writing Lab(opens in new window) and is a commonly used resource for writing assistance 24/7

    Activity: A Closer look at APA ‘sentence case’

    A Closer Look at APA ‘Sentence Case’

    The most common error encountered with APA format is related to sentence case for book and article titles. Confused as to what this means? You may be accustomed to capitalizing every word in the title of a paper, but in sentence case, only the first word is capitalized. There are a couple of exceptions, however, where you would still capitalize the first letter of the word:

    • proper nouns
    • first word of a subtitle
    • first word following punctuation, such as a colon or em dash.

    Read this post from the APA blog to learn more, dating back to 1929!

    Don’t forget – sentence case is one of the distinguishing factors between MLA, Chicago, and APA formats.

    9.6: How to Cite Your Sources- Avoiding Plagiarism is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.