Things you MUST cite:
• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
• When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media
Things you do not have to cite:
• 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
• When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.
• When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents)
• When you are using generally-accepted facts, e.g., pollution is bad for the environment, including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities, e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally-accepted fact.
source: Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Check the Database your using for a citation generator! Usually a button that says "Cite." But be aware that no Citation Generator is perfect and you're responsible for catching their mistakes.
Incorrect "APA" citation from CINAHL citation generator:
Wootton, A., Starkey, N. J., & Barber, C. C. (2019). Unmoving and Unmoved: Experiences and Consequences of Impaired Non-verbal Expressivity in Parkinson’s Patients and their Spouses. Disability & Rehabilitation, 41(21), 2516–2527. https://doi-org.wv-o-ursus-proxy02.ursus.maine.edu/10.1080/09638288.2018.1471166.
Incorrect "APA" citation from a citation generator website:
Wootton, A., Starkey, N. J., & Barber, C. C. (2018). Unmoving and unmoved: experiences and consequences of impaired non-verbal expressivity in Parkinson’s patients and their spouses. Disability and Rehabilitation, 41(21), 2516–2527. doi: 10.1080/09638288.2018.1471166
Correct APA 7th edition formatting [changed by a person]:
Wootton, A., Starkey, N. J., & Barber, C. C. (2019). Unmoving and unmoved: Experiences and consequences of impaired non-verbal expressivity in Parkinson’s patients and their spouses. Disability and Rehabilitation, 41(21), 2516–2527. https://doi:10.1080/09638288.2018.1471166
APA in-text citations
You need in-text citations any time you use ideas you didn't come with yourself. You might quote someone else's work or you might paraphrase, where you put someone else's ideas into your own words. Either way you need an in-text citation to credit the people who's idea you used.
Paraphrase:
Wootton et al. (2019) recorded that their participants expressed feelings of loss, unfamiliarity, and uncertainty while giving their responses.
Or
They recorded that their participants expressed feelings of loss, unfamiliarity, and uncertainty while giving their responses (Wootton et al., 2019).
Short Quote:
"Their responses were typified by feelings of loss, unfamiliarity, and uncertainty (Wootton et al., 2019).
If what you're citing has a page number, that should also be included in the in-text citation. For example:
(Decker & Perrone, 2020, p. 132)
Or
(Gray, 2019, pp. 60-62).
What if...
There's no date?
Use n.d. as a place holder for the year. It stands for "no date." For example:
In-Text: (Bonnet & Johnson, n.d.)
Reference:
Bonnet J. & Johnson M. (n.d.). Fogler Library's subject specialist program. Journal Title, 33(2).
