When you use your own words to convey information from an original source, you are paraphrasing. While paraphrases do not require quotation marks, they do require citations. Be sure to change both the words and word order of the original source in order to avoid plagiarism.

The citation to paraphrased text must provide the author’s last name and the year of publication, and “page or paragraph number when it would help readers locate the relevant passage within a long and complex work” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 269).

Paraphrasing ALWAYS requires a citation. Even if you are using your own words, the idea still belongs to someone else. Sometimes there is a fine line between paraphrasing and plagiarizing someone’s writing.

Always include page numbers in the APA in-text citation when quoting a source. Don’t include page numbers when referring to a work as a whole – for example, an entire book or journal article.

Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves three purposes: It gives proper credit to the authors of the words or ideas that you incorporated into your paper. It allows those who are reading your work to locate your sources, in order to learn more about the ideas that you include in your paper.

If it’s your words, your opinion, your photo, or your graph, of course, you don’t need to cite it….For example, you do not need to cite the following:

1. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States.
2. Sacramento is the capital of California.
3. A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes.

You should always try to read and cite the original work (the primary source). If it is not possible to do this, you have to cite the original as contained in the secondary source. Your in-text citation should include both authors: the author(s) of the original source and the author(s) of the secondary source.

Citing sources properly is essential to avoiding plagiarism in your writing. Not citing sources properly could imply that the ideas, information, and phrasing you are using are your own, when they actually originated with another author. Plagiarism doesn’t just mean copy and pasting another author’s words.

There are certain things that do not need documentation or credit, including:

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject.
• When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments.

APA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the year of publication, for example: (Field, 2005). For direct quotations, include the page number as well, for example: (Field, 2005, p. 14).

About APA Style The APA referencing style is an “author-date” style, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) and the year of publication given wholly or partly in round brackets. Use only the surname of the author(s) followed by a comma and the year of publication.

Formatting the APA Reference Page

• “References” is centered 1-inch down. It’s not capitalized, bold, or italicized.
• The reference citations are double spaced with no additional lines between them.
• References that go past the first line have a hanging indent.
• All references are in alphabetical order.

Both MLA and APA use parenthetical citations to cite sources in the text. However, they include slightly different information. An APA in-text citation includes the author’s last name and the publication year. An MLA in-text citation includes the author’s last name and a page number.

How to alphabetize your print sources

1. Organize your Reference page by the last names of the authors (or editors).
2. If a work has no author or editor, alphabetize by the first word of the title other than a, an, or the.
3. Arrange same author sources using their last names every time.

Sort a list alphabetically in Word

1. Select the list you want to sort.
2. Go to Home > Sort.
3. Set Sort by to Paragraphs and Text.
4. Choose Ascending (A to Z) or Descending (Z to A).
5. Select OK.

Reference List Order

1. Arrange entries in alphabetical order by the surname of the first author followed by the initials of the author’s given name(s).
2. When alphabetizing names, disregard any spaces or punctuation marks in two-word surnames. Also disregard anything in parentheses or square brackets.

In APA Style, alphabetization is easy as long as you remember these simple rules:

1. Alphabetize letter by letter.
2. Ignore spaces, capitalization, hyphens, apostrophes, periods, and accent marks.
3. When alphabetizing titles or group names as authors, go by the first significant word (disregard a, an, the, etc.)