APA is the American Psychological Association, which has a set of guidelines. Writers and students from various fields use this. This style is used to show sources used in our assignment, to give credit to the authors, and to avoid plagiarism. This is used in paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing through in-text citations inside the sentence and references at the end of the assignment.
Title page formatting
This is the most common mistake students make. Font should always be ‘Times New Roman’, the first alphabet in every word should be capitalized and the size of the font should be 12. The line spacing should always be double.
Abstract page formatting
The header should be in the middle of the passage. Indent the content to the left. Line spacing should be double. The word ‘References’ at the end should be in Italics. Indent that to the middle and should not have a full stop at the end.
Body Page formatting
The term ‘Introduction’ can be eliminated, rather, it can mention the complete title. Alignment of the first word in each paragraph should be left aligned with a 5-character space.
In-text Citation using one Author – Punctuation
The first name of the author is not required; hence you can erase that from the citation. Secondly, you need to leave a space after a comma after the author’s name.
For example, a million registered businesses are owned by foreign and local investors (Anderson, 2019).
In-text Citation using one Author – Capitalized
Most people mention the name of the Author in all caps, which is wrong. The first letter should be in Caps and the rest of the letters should be in small letters and required to add the initials.
For example, some of the common pitfalls that organizations descend into are too casual Fridays or too many alcoholic beverages on the company (Patrick, 2015) instead of writing (M.W. PATRICK, 2015).
In-text Citation using two Authors
When two Authors are mentioned within the parenthesis, you can use an ampersand to connect them. For Example, (Brown & Vasilevski, 2019)
When you add a page number, the letter ‘p’ to denote the page number should be in a small letter.
For example, (Brown & Vasilevski, 2019, p.16)
When the Authors’ names are outside the parenthesis, they need to be connected through ‘and’, and the full stop should come after the Parenthesis, within the parenthesis, or before the parenthesis. For example, ‘according to Brown and Vasilevski (2019)’.
In-text citation – Citing Multiple Authors
When there are Multiple Authors, you don’t have to mention all the authors’ names. You can just mention one author’s first name et al., followed by the year of publication. ‘et al.’ means the others.
For example, if we do not provide feedback and communicate, strong performance loses its effect and leads to success (Natalie et al.,2012).
Or you can use this format
Natalie et al. (2012) claim that, if we do not provide feedback and communicate, strong performance loses its effect and leads to success.
Citing Multiple Works
When you are using multiple works or articles of the same or different authors in your in-text citation, you need to use a semicolon to separate the names. Also, you need to put them in alphabetical order.
For example, in downward communication, information is conveyed from superior to subordinate (Barton & Calroy, 2010; Glynn, 2003; Levitt, 2015).
Group Authors
If the author is an organization, you should not write their full website address, you just write the university name.
For example, international students should spend their time and energy on some extracurricular… (Harvard University, 2020).
If the University has an abbreviation as UCW, you can also write that like, (UCW, 2020).
Unknown Date
When you use an article or a work with an unknown date, instead of leaving the date blank, you need to write ‘n.d.’ after the name.
For example, in business, good manners translate to improved communication skills, exceptional customer service, and a better bottom line (Chaney, n.d.).
Unknown Author
When you use the work of an unknown author, don’t mention ‘no name’ under author, rather write anonymous
For example, in business, good manners translate to improved communication skills, exceptional customer service, and a better bottom line (Anonymous, 2017).
Reference page formatting
This is the page where most of the students make mistakes. You need to have the Title in the middle of the page and should be in bold.
Font size should be 12 and Font style should be ‘Times New Roman’
Indentation should be done by selecting ‘Hanging’ under Indentation.
Works need to be mentioned in Alphabetical order.
Finally, line spacing should be double spacing.
Conclusion
APA format citation is a skill and is used extensively by college students for their assignments or Thesis. However, learning to use that with proper guidelines, thereby avoiding mistakes is inevitable. Digi Assignment Help ,helps in this venture of students to get their assignment right the first time through proper guidelines with perfect examples.
