APA Referencing
What is it, and why do we do it?
Ready to dive in? Click on the image below to check out our online Wintec APA Referencing Guide for all our APA tips and tricks.
Remember, you can always email your Subject Librarian or come to the Library Information Desk for help if something doesn't make sense!
Reference list entries and in-text citations look different for different kinds of resources. A book reference is different from a journal article reference, and a webpage is different again - but they all have a lot of the same information in them. Have a look at these reference examples and see if it makes sense to you!
Remember, you can always look at the Wintec APA Referencing Guide or ask for help! You don't have to figure out referencing on your own.
1. In-text Citation: BOOKS
2. Reference list entry: BOOKS
APA References for journal articles, and webpages look different
And there are lots of other kinds of references too! Remember to check the Wintec APA Guide to get your reference format.
Why do I need to reference??
1. Plagiarism!
When you do an assignment, you have to find resources - books, ebooks, journal articles, and information from reliable websites. The ideas you get from those resources are not your ideas. If you write a paper without giving credit to those resources for the ideas from them that you use, that is plagiarism. It's a kind of academic stealing. Referencing means you're not claiming someone else's ideas as your own.
2. It shows how hard you worked on your assignment, and how much you learned researching it.
Most assignments aren't easy, and they can take a lot of time and effort. Referencing shows your tutor how hard you worked, that you did a lot of research and found relevant, useful resources on your topic. It makes it easy to see that you've thought about your assignment, looked up new information, and learned things from writing it.
3. It lets other people find and use the resources you cite - and means you can find and use theirs and too!
All research builds on other people's ideas. As a student, you do a lot research for your assignments, and experts in your field do the same when they try to discover new things. You can use the references in a book or journal article to help you do your assignment, and experts do the same when they write those books and journal articles - they use other people's references to learn things. When more people learn about the things you've learned and referenced, everyone benefits.
(It's also really helpful for you as you study - if you remember a book had a really great chapter on something for your next assignment, your reference means you can easily find that book again!)