APA Style (7th ed.)

APA Style is widely used in the sciences as well as other academic disciplines, and therefore fits well with many of Sheridan's programs. Using a recognized citation style by a credible organization ensures consistency and makes it easier for your reader to understand what information you have cited, and where you found that information.

You must provide a citation for any information, image or other media that you use from another source. Citing your sources both provides credit to the original author(s), as well as provides credibility to your argument. If you can imagine your reader asking 'how do you know that?' or 'did you create that?', provide a citation.

You should have as many citations as are needed to support your argument or report. There is no limit. However, your instructor will also want you to provide your own argument and demonstrate your understanding of the content of what you have read. Your citations should be added within your own analysis. Always refer to your assignment guidelines and ask your instructor to clarify the expectations for the assignment.

Not necessarily. There are relatively few rules for in-text citations and they are generally fairly easy to complete manually. However, if you use the References tab in Word to build your reference list, generating the in-text citations is even easier. Keep in mind, there are no perfect citation generators and students are expected to check all their citations no matter what generator is used. Other commonly used citation generators for the reference list include Mendeley and Zotero.

See Citation Managers for more details.

There are times you will not be able to identify an author, or a publication date, or a title, or the source. In these cases, APA has some recommendations you can follow. See Missing Reference Information