as you're aware APA formatting is known for being notoriously detailed oriented so I spent the last week compiling all of my lessons on APA formatting into this Mega tutorial that's probably equally detailed oriented but what you should know is I have this free pdf download that you can get from the link in the description below and also this video is quite long so do note that it is structured as the categories are appearing on the screen right now and you can use the time stamps to skip ahead if there's something specific you're looking for everyone else let's jump into section one where we're going to discuss General formatting and your paper setup so the way this tutorial is going to work is that we have the completed paper on the left hand side of the screen and we're going to be building out the APA formatting on the right so what we're going to start with is our general formatting starting with our margins so per APA formatting your entire paper should have a 1 in margin around around all four signs the good news is that this is the default setting in Microsoft Word if you want to verify that come up here to the rule bar go to layout and then you can see margins here the drop down it is automatically on normal where the first official General formatting we're going to set is our line spacing so our entire document needs to be double spaced to set this you're going to again come up here to the rule bar go to paragraph select line space spacing options in which it's as simple as hitting 2.0 now do be sure to go back and make sure that if the remove space after paragraph is showing you want to go ahead and click that so there's no extra lines when you hit enter throughout your document the next thing you're going to do is add a page number to your title page my favorite way to do this is ahead and double click in the header window as you can see that just populated our option to edit in which we have our page number drop-down menu right here you want to make sure to select top of page and then add the page number in the right hand corner like you see it is there now before we click out we're not quite finished you want to make sure to highlight that number so that way you can change the font size and type to match the rest of your document we're going to change this to Times New Roman 12 point because that tends to be the universally accepted font size and type for APA formatting once that's finished it's as simple as double clicking anywhere on your paper and now you can see our page number is set speaking of font let's go ahead and set that up for the rest of our document to do so you want to select the font drop-down menu here in our rule bar go ahead and change calibri to Times New Roman and we're going to set it at a size 12 but that officially concludes the general formatting in which now we can move on to typing out the elements on our title page page the first thing you want to do is Center your cursor come up here to paragraph select select the centering option and then I recommend hitting enter roughly five or six times to bring your cursor down to the middle of your paper from there you're going to start by typing out the title as you can see it is in bold face font so you can come up to font select bold a shortcut is also hitting command b or control B depending on if you're using a Mac or a PC I'm going to go ahead and paste in our title right here as a rule of thumb a good title is a handful of keywords that captures the essence of your paper if you want to include a subtitle go ahead and type it out directly below your main title like you see it is there although we don't have one so I'm going to go ahead and get rid of that in which now we're going to move on to including our name so to include your name element you want to hit enter twice so one two and then you're going to type your name like you see it is here on the left where it's the first name middle initial followed by our last name now do note that the font is no longer bolded as it won't be for the rest of the elements on our title page the next element you want to include is your affiliation line and so this is going to be composed of two different things first your department and two your University the department might sound a little confusing but it's simply the department in which you're getting your degree under so I got a business degree therefore mine is the Department of Business and then my University was John F Kennedy University next you want to include your course information this also is composed of two different things it's going to be your course code followed by a colon and then the name of your course if you you're not sure what the course code is you can usually find it physically on the outside of the door or if you're taking online classes in your syllabus or somewhere in your online portal next up you want to include your professor's name and so my only note here is that you want to follow the same naming convention that they use to refer to themselves so if it's doctor Professor PhD however they type out their name in your course material is exactly how you want to include it on your paper and that leads us right into the final element for our title page which is the due date for your assignment for this you simply want to format it the way that you would format a date in the country you live in but with that our title page is good to go now let's move on to formatting the main body and the reference list and the easiest thing that I recommend doing is you want to insert a page break directly after the last element on your title page and so to do that make sure your cursor is flush against the last portion of that go up here to insert select pages and then insert page break what that's going to do is that brings your cursor to the the top of your second page this is going to freeze the formatting on the title page and make your life super easy so from here we're going to actually copy our title and paste that here at the top because that's going to signify the introduction starting our main body per APA 7th edition they no longer want you to type out the word introduction so with that we're now ready to start writing the main body in our paper now from here I recommend repeating this process in inserting another page break to format your reference list so again bring your cursor flush to the end of that title go to Pages insert page break and then now we can title our reference list with the phrase references do note how it's centered and bolded as this is apa's standard for starting your reference list so you can understand why I recommend sitting in the page breaks for example let's go back to our main body and let's let's add some of the content for our paper so we've started writing coming back down to our reference list notice how it's frozen in place that way your reference list is always going to be on the last page so you're free to add edit references as your typing out your paper now we're not quite finished with the formatting for our reference page the next thing you want to do is set the hanging indent and so the first thing is you want to bring your cursor back over to the leftand side of your screen and then from there using the line spacing drop-down menu you want to select line spacing options here you will see the indentation features in the center in which you want to select special change it from none to hanging and then ensure that it's hanging by 05 in from there select okay and then now your hanging indent should be set so just to put this to the test here I am typing out a full reference list entry as you can see when when I fill up that first entire line and my cursor goes to the next it is indented inward that half inch which is per APA standards now before we move on I do have one other life-saving trick I'd like to show you so while our hanging indent is set for our paper if you were to copy and paste a reference from somewhere else the formatting might be a little off and so it's important to know how to fix this the easiest way to do this is you would highlight that reference and then use the ruler to set the hanging indent notice my cursor is hovering over that middle carrot for the hanging indent if I hold that and drag it in that half inch there we go my hanging indent is fixed now that's going to be it for our general formatting the next thing we're going to talk about is using section headings and now before you skip ahead please watch this section of the video because it's actually what's going to make your life easier as an academic writer so simply put section headings are what you use to organize your papers and under APA 7th edition there are five levels those five levels are formatted like you see here on the screen you're welcome to pause take a screenshot or download that free pdf again I'm not going to go through the specifics right now instead I want to explain how they work and show you an example of why they're important so the way they work is that section headings are there to signify distinct sections in your paper so a level one is going to identify a main section level two would be a subsection to level one level three is going to be a subsection to level two so on and so forth now to be clear even though there are five levels of section headings you as a student writing student papers papers that are not up for publication you're most likely only going to use a level one level two maybe a level three and if you're using a level three it's because it's a very long complicated paper also do know that section headings are not necessarily a requirement of APA formatting your professor might request them instead APA has made them more as a tool you can use and let me show you why you should be using them let me show you an actual example okay on the left hand side of the screen this is the assignment we're writing and so real quickly let's go go through this so you understand it as you can see we're being asked to create an analysis of the accounting portions of a business plan using assortment tools presented in the class great we have a list of four different criteria and under each of those criterias there's some sub criterias that we're being asked to answer as well so with that little bit of understanding here's how I would set up this section headings coming over to our paper I already have the title page set up we're going to title this butcher box financials under APA 7th edition your title is always going to be the first section heading in your paper so scrolling down I've already created these section headings as you can see our title is our first one signifying our introduction so let's go ahead and talk about the remaining section headings and how we use our instructions to create those so first things first notice how the paper is using a combination of level one and level two section headings starting with the level one headings because this is what I recommend setting up first notice how we have four main sections so four sections using level one headings and well notice how there are four main sections in our project criteria as you can see the way we labeled the section headings in our paper are reflecting those four main sections for the first one we have cost benefit analysis for for the second one you have your break even analysis then your profor of financial statements followed by the discussion this is a really effective way to create the skeleton outline of your paper in which now we can go back through each main objective to see if there's any sub criterias or any other distinct sections we're being asked about so let's take a look at the first one cost benefit analysis reading through here what we're being asked to do is outline the advantages and disadvantages of the business to determine if it is a Sound Investment decision great to do this we're being asked to perform a SWAT analysis which you can see here is where you're going to detail the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats related to that business so in other words we have four distinct sub criterias that we need to cover in order to fulfill this objective so looking at our outline I'm going to switch to a level two heading and that's exactly what I'm going to include there strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and so that's the process you're going to do for each of your main objectives see if there's any subobjectives that you want to break into a level two heading when it comes to including your conclusion you have the option to include it as a level one like this that would make it its own main section however for this particular paper I would include it as a level two since our last main section is a discussion in other words that discussion is where we're going to analyze and discuss what we've written in the paper therefore the conclusion would just be a nice way to finish out the discussion either way is fine the last thing I want to touch on is why we only used a level two heading and when you would use a level three so we only went up to a level two because that's all we needed we have our main section and the subsections relevant to that section let's say for example in the first objective in the cost benefit analysis we're being asked to give three examples of each section in that SWAT analysis then I would recommend switching to a level three heading and so let me paste in what this would look like and let me explain because it's going to look a little crazy okay so first things first notice how I switched my formatting to reflect a level three a pro tip is since I'm including examples I don't exactly know what those strengths are yet those weaknesses are so as a placeholder I'm just showing that I need to include three of each of those and then now if you're looking at that thinking man that just looks like so much work this is something you would do probably for a much larger paper so let's say that this was a 25 page paper not a 10 to 12 then this doesn't look so crazy after all instead it gives you a very specific guide map to follow it makes it really easy for you to come over to your paper you know exactly what you need to do each step of the way and also look at it from your professor's perspective they're going to look at your paper they're going to see oh they have outlined exactly what the instructions have asked them to do now I just need to go through and make sure they answered them fully and adequately what that would look like on your part is basically you're going to start under the cost benefit analysis by introducing your paper to the concept of a cost benefit analysis maybe some introductory material about your business that relates to this objective then very similarly I'm going to do the same thing for the strength portion of a SWAT analysis what is that what does that relate to I'm going to explain that there which will lead perfectly into me giving example one then example two then example three which that says two so let's put that is three great concluding this specific part of your cost benefit analysis and then from there you're just going to repeat that for each of those four sections all right now that we're good on Section headings the next part we're going to move on to is creating citations and references in order to understand citing and referencing the first thing we need to talk about is the relationship between these two things as well as why we do it so when you're writing an academic paper that means you're writing a research based paper in other words you're out there researching other people's ideas thoughts whatever and using that in your paper and so because you're using other people's ideas you need to credit where they originally came from if you don't do that that's when you commit plagiarism which is essentially academic theft so how all of this works is say you're performing research online you find a journal article that you like the study fits a point you're trying to make in your paper and so what you're going to do is you're going to paraphrase the material from that article that's relevant to that point in your paper then because you've use that information from somewhere else you want to create a full reference list entry at the end of your paper that contains all the citable material that someone would need to relook up that Source now in order to link that paraphrase material to that reference list entry you're going to create a shortened reference which is called an intext citation that you're going to place at the beginning of the paraphrased material now that material is linked to the reference list which is linked to the original Source okay so now that we understand why we're creating them I'm going to cut to a tutorial that's going to go through the basic formatting for citing and referencing now we need to disc discuss what this looks like in action so when you're out there writing your paper what do you actually need to do in order to link these two items together and yes note that the document is color coordinated because this is going to help with your understanding I promise okay the first thing we need to understand is a reference list entry more specifically the four elements of a reference so these are the four items that you need to include in your reference list entries for it to be considered correct and complete but what those four elements are is the author the date the title and the source so as you can see in the real life example you have all of those four elements present yay you have properly and adequately cited this Source you've credited the author but you're not quite done yet because when you're writing your paper and you include material from another source you need to make sure you credit them in your paper as you have in your reference list so this is where the Intex citations come in and quite frankly all in text citations will always have two elements present you have the author and the date and now if you're wondering why only those two elements and not the four first of all if you included all four that would clutter up muddy up your paper quite a bit and number two if you have the author in the date that makes it very easy to go down to the reference list entry and spot which reference that material belongs to because that's the first two items you're going to see now every once in a while you'll need to include a third element which is the source locator and the source locator if you note is blue because it corresponds with the source type so in this example parot 9 that's stands for paragraph 9 so this might be an online article and they're referring to the paragraph if it were a YouTube video or a podcast you'd use the Tim stamp but with that we know how to link these two together next which is already kind of alluded to here let's discuss the two different types of written material that require a citation that is paraphrase material and material that is directly quoted paraphrase material this is when you're expressing another author's ideas but you're writing them in your own words and quite frankly this should account for 98% of citable material in other words directly direct quotes should be used sparingly because this is when you're using another person words verbatim and verbatim is the key word here because in order to directly quote somebody you have to leave it as you found it the words have to stay exactly as they are otherwise you need to paraphrase correctly or you're going to miss some points all right the last thing is let's discuss the two delivery options you have for this in other words you have a choice on how you format both paraphrase material and directly quoted material and that is through either a parenthetical or a narrative citation and the gist is that they're exactly what they sound like a parenthetical citation is when you enclose the elements for the Intex citation in parentheses like you see it is here for a narrative citation You're simply going to incorporate the elements into the structure of the sentence generally something as you see it is in this example you would include the author's last name into the sentence structure followed by the date enclosed in parentheses now if it's a direct quote you're going to follow these same principles however you're going to be formatting per a direct quote meaning you're going to include the direct quote in double quotations to signify this so if this were a parenthetical citation as you can see you have that third element but the rest stays the same you have the elements and close in parentheses at the end of the sentence and moving down to the narrative citation the only thing that's different here is that a direct quote that's using a narrative Citation APA ask that you include the source locator at the end of the sentence inclosed in parentheses simply so it doesn't distract from the structure of the sentence now that you have the foundation understanding for citing and referencing I'm going to break down each of these topics separately starting with building reference list entries the two things that you need to understand are the four elements of an APA reference and then the two formatting patterns of those references so let's start with the first portion the four elements in other words these are the building blocks when you want to site a source these are the four items you're looking for what they are is the author the date the title The Source so coming down here this is what it looks like in a more formal setting so when you type all of this out this is just the basics of what it might look and that is this is how you're going to include the author by their last name middle initial first initial then you have the data publication sometimes this is just the year maybe you have the day and the month maybe you have all three items we'll get to this in the examples and then by title we mean title of the work so what is the journal article called or the web page called or even the Facebook post What's the title of it called that's what the title of the work is referring to and then finally you have the source element so starting with the source name that's going to be the name of the website the name of the journal that the journal article belongs to the name of the book that you found the information in and quite frankly because most of our information is online there's generally a second part to the source which is going to be either a DOI number or a URL link now if it's not online then you simply only need the name of the source so when you're citing a source these are the four items you're looking for now this is a good time to note that sometimes the source might be missing some some of these elements so an author may not be listed or the data publication may not be listed for example please keep in mind that in order for a source to be a source you have to have the source element because you need to be able to look it up so for example if you're trying to Source information from an interview you did but it's not recorded it's not written anywhere well no one can look it up therefore that's not going to count as a citable source if anything that might be a personal communication quite frankly a source can be missing all three of the first elements but as long as you have the location of where you found that material you can cite it in your paper but all right we got one basic concept down let's move on to the second one and that is the two formatting patterns of APA reference so what that means is that for the thousands of sources that you can be trying to site all of them will fall into one of these two categories when you're formatting them and that is either with an italic title or with an italic Source the criteria for these is that for an italic title it needs to be a work that stands alone and for an italic Source it needs to be a work that is part of a greater whole so now let's see what this actually looks like using our template of the four elements note how for works that stand alone the title of the work is italicized and for works that are part of a greater whole The Source name is italicized and quite frankly if you're wondering what the difference between standing alone and part of a greater hole is well you're not alone it's very common and this confuses college students so this is how I like to simplify it I want you to think of a journal versus a journal article the journal itself is a standalone Source because it doesn't belong to anything else however the journal article because it belongs to the journal it's a work that's a part of a greater ho there's actually a list here this is in the APA manual you can also find it in that PDF that you can download that I have made for you guys and so let's Zoom all the way out okay so Standalone think of a full book reference works such as encyclopedias you have government reports other types of reports what they call grade literature something like a brochure a fact sheet a press release ethics codes dissertation thesis papers the good news is that if you'll know most sources are considered Standalone part of a greater whole again fall in line with that journal article mentality think of a magazine article a newspaper a blog post an edited book chapter a TV series episode podcast episodes this is the difference when it comes to how you're going to be formatting the source so these are the two things if you understand this you can site anything but all right now we're going to take this information and get into the examples where we're going to see this in action okay these are the first I want to start with and that's an example of a work that stands alone verse one that's part of a greater hole and we're going to zoom in here so you can see all the finer details and what I really want you to do is pay attention to how the template translates into the actual reference because here's the thing the template this is the aim you're shooting for however when you're out there citing an actual Source you might be missing little pieces and there's going to be different variations and so I'm going to do my best to explain why the reference is the way it is in regard to the template all right so here we have a standard web page with one author as you can see for an author element what APA asks is that you include the author's last name followed by a comma their middle initial a period ending with their first initial a period coming down here as you can see the middle name was not listed therefore it's omitted from the author element so for this example that is considered a complete and correct author element finally I want you to take note that there is a period after the final portion of the author element why is this important it's because this is going to be a common theme throughout all of the elements and that is that to conclude an element you want to include a period to signify the conclusion of that element so as you can see here all four of them can be easily identif ified if you simply find the periods all right next we have the date element which quite frankly the date element is always going to be the day that this Source became a citable source so in other words when was the book published when was the web page posted when was the podcast episode posted when was that piece of work officially made a citable source now coming over here to our template this again is the aim you're shooting for so if all of this is present this is what you're going to include and that is the year followed by a comma the month day of publication so coming down here we had all of that available to us we had 2018 a comma January 2nd if all that was listed on this web page was the year then our date element would simply look like that but again we had all of it available to us so that's what we're going to include cool moving on to the third ele element we have the title of the work and remember this is a work that stands alone so we're going to italicize the title to signify that here this is the example I like to go with because we have a few good points for formatting here I want you to take note that one both portions of it is written in sentence case meaning that the first letter is capitalized why is the first letter capitalized in this example it's because it's broken up with a punctuation we have the colon here if there was no colon then we would simply leave it like this continuing with the sentence case formatting but again we have it there so we're going to leave it as is because that's the correct formatting for the title of the work in this case all right moving on to the source element we have the website name and then because this is an online Source we're going to include the URL link now this brings me to a good point if the entire Source element contains both of these why is the period after the website name and not the URL well the logic is twofold one if you include any punctuation such as a period after a URL link or a DOI number you're going to break that link so someone's not going to be able to click on it and actually use it the other reason is that a URL or DOI is optional it's not always going to be available to you and so for a source to be correct you simply need the name of the source what it's called and so we'll see in other examples now looking at the actual example couple things I want to note here one note how the symbol is used rather than the word and the reason is because that's how it's presented on the website you don't want to change that so there's no confusion where the source came also it's capitalized why because the name of the source is generally more formalized than the title so things like the Washington Post or the New York Times or the name of a book the name of a podcast generally it's going to be capitalized but as you already know we have our period to close out the name of the source element here and then we have our live URL link where I could click this and go find this actual Source very cool now let's take all of that understanding and let's move on to an example of a source that's part of a greater hole let's keep ourselves zoomed in actually I'm just going to extend this so we can zoom in and see everything nice and neatly Perfect all right as I said my explanations are going to get a little shorter as we go on what I want you to pay attention to is that the formatting standards for the different variations remain relatively the same across all different sources the biggest difference really is rather to italicize the title of the work or the title of the source as you can see the templates for both of these look the same so diving in into this actual example starting with the author element we can see that we have one author the middle name was not available to us so we omitted that from the source and here we go looks just like the one we did in the previous example moving on to the second element here we have the date again all three pieces were available to us so we formatted it the same way we did with the other source now we have the slight variation in formatting because this is a magazine article which belongs to an actual magazine we're going to leave the title in basic font and italicize the title of the magazine aside from that you're still going to follow sentence case formatting for the title element in this example the title is all one phrase there's no punctuation to break it up so that's why the F in the first word is capitalized and nothing else now coming over here we have the title of the magazine which is prevention easy we're going to italicize that and then note how there is a URL link that's because this is a source we found online as you can see for this note if it's a print Source you're going to use the page numbers vers the URL so let's say I did read this in a hard copy we're going to use a comma after the title of the magazine and then include the page range as such with the period following after the pages why is it okay to use a period after the page range and not the URL well because a period after page ranges isn't going to break the Integrity of the page ranges as it would the URL link kind of makes sense doesn't it but all right now we're going to move on to some variations of these other elements starting with different variations of the author so let me just scroll down here so you can see what I mean because the first thing I want to talk about is when the author is a group author what that means is that an actual person or people are not responsible for the source an organization is maybe a government agency it's an entity verse a living live person so taking a look at the template well everything else looks exactly the same except in the author element we're going to use the name of the group in this case an organization Canadian Cancer Society instead of a person something to note with group authors that's relatively common is that if the group name and the website are the same then you don't need to include the name of the website in the source element so in this case Canadian Cancer Society is the organization responsible for this Source it's also the name of the website this article was found on so APA asks that you don't include it twice because that's redundant and with the source element you're fine because you have the URL link where you can go find the source other than that this is a standalone source so we're going to italicize the title here and we're good to go now the next author variation we're going to look at is when a source has two authors and I've actually chosen a journal article for another reason in that journal articles The Source has just a few extra moving parts then other sources so this one has two different variations we're going to pay attention to starting with the template this is your aim when you're citing a source that has two authors responsible for that piece of work simply put you're going to use the ersan symbol to separate the two authors both of them you're aiming for the same information their last name middle initial first initial if present as you can see in the example that's exactly what we have we have Soo comma C period J period the ersan sign John comma o period p period again pretty simple stuff but now let's talk about the variations of the rest of the elements that are specific to a journal article first looking at the date element APA asks that you only include the year of publication when it comes to a journal article why well because with the source you're going to be including a lot of other information that makes it very specific that they would rather you leave out the month in the day so there's not as much information to where it's confusing as you can see we have a lot of other numbers and just stuff in this Source in general so to keep it nice and simple they asked to only include the year of publication and this example our Journal was published in 2017 and other than that the rest of the formatting Remains the Same now moving on to the title of the journal article well we know this is a work that's part of a greater whole therefore we're not going to italicize it and the rest of the formatting standards remain the same meaning we're using sentence case especially if there is a punctuation we're going to continue sentence case again so there's no variations in referencing the title of a journal article it's next in the source element that we're going to see these changes the good news though the first portion the title of the journal Remains the Same keep it in italic fonts it's what comes after that where there's just a few extra items you need to include as you can see here you need to include the volume number the issue number and the page range if available so let's see what this looks like in Translation all right title of the journal we have it here italic fonts it's in capital case because the journal article is great now because we're not finished with the source element we're going to include a comma instead of a period next we're going to include the numbers associated with the periodical what is that mean periodical means it's posted periodically there's more than one in other words there's a volume and an issue number that this Source belongs to we're going to start with the volume number followed by the issue number and in order to differentiate between the two we're going to keep the volum number italicized and then we're going to un italicize our font and put the issue number in parentheses so it's Crystal Clear which is which in this example we have a page range so again since we're not finished with the source element we're going to use a comma versus a period and we're going to include the page range very simple now that our source element the first portion anyways is complete we will go ahead and include the period to close that and then we now have our DOI number because that was an online version and I do want to point out something because I know that seems like a lot of information it seems like a lot to remember the good news is in journal articles especially online Journal articles this information is typically grouped together you're not going to find the volume number up at the top right hand corner of one and the issue number down in the bottom as you can see here this one actually has a full reference list entry which a lot do as well but I just want to point out the source portion typically it's always included together and if it's not formatted correctly it's still in that order they're never going to change that order so you're always aware which is which and just to reiterate one more time if we didn't have a page range available to us then you don't need to include it I would include a period after the issue number in this case followed by the DOI number but we're going put this back to how we found it and we're going to continue on our quest with the author variations there's two more scenarios in specific that we're going to cover and we're going to keep with Journal articles because they tend to have a lot of authors the first one is what to do when a source has three or more authors and three or more meaning up to the first 19 so this stands true rather you have three five 18 okay simply put all of the authors leading up to the last two two are going to be separated by a comma and then the last two are going to use that Ampersand symbol once more signifying that you've reached the last two something I'd like to note when you have multiple authors is the order why are they listed the way they are well you're going to list them by contribution to the piece of work so in other words the first author listed will always be the one who put in the most work followed by the second the third going down the list until you get to the author that contributed the least amount of work looking at our example we can see our authors using this template we have I believe seven in this example but regardless all of the authors are separated by a comma until you get to the last two where you'll find the ersan since the rest of this Source follows the exact same formatting we just covered in the previous example I'm not going to cover the rest of the elements here instead let's let's focus on what to do if you have 20 or more authors because again this does happen and you'll find it mostly with Journal articles where lots of people can be contributing to that journal if you're faced with this situation what APA would like you to do is include the first 19 authors as you would followed by an ellipsis which is three periods then you're going to skip the rest of the authors until you get to the last and include the last one so let's say this had 25 well I would include the first 19 and then I'm going to include the 25th this situation is definitely on the rare side but just know this you're never going to type out more than 20 authors even if you have more available to you at this point you should have a pretty good understanding of building references now let's go into this same level of detail with creating Intex citations we're going to walk through the most common scenarios regarding the different types in Tex citations okay so here is the most common and that is a reference entry that has one author so this is your most standard what we've seen before where you would include the author's last name followed by the year that's provided this is your most basic simple Intex citation formatting and I did want to show one more example with that Source locator the rest of the examples won't have them but let's go ahead let's graduate to two authors so our full reference list entry as you can see we have two authors here for the Intex citation you're going to include them with the ersan signal signal sign in between the two last names as you see it is here the date element Remains the Same this is a good example because I do want to point out that for the narrative citation you're going to use the word and instead of the essan and the reason for that is is that nowhere in your writing is it acceptable to use an ampersand signal sign sorry Ampersand sign instead of the word anywhere throughout your document when it comes to apa formatting so this is why they want you to spell it out here all right let's go ahead and move on to three or more authors and so in this example I think we have more way more than three but I think this is a great example to demonstrate three or more because APA formatting has made this very simple for you guys when it comes to the Intex citation basically anytime there's three or more authors you're going to use the abbreviation at all which literally means and others believe in Latin or something like that but it's going to be formatted exactly like you see I have here so you're going to use the first author's last name followed by at all and a period because this is abbreviation you have your comma and the date element as normal do note that at all there's no capitalization you want to keep that lowercase so it's not confused with the author's last name but now let's move on from authors and let's talk about what you need to do if the author element is not a person per se but a group author so an organization a government agency something in that vein B basically what you're going to do is use the organization as the author because looking at the reference list entry that is the author element so in this example that would be the World Health Organization so coming down here to our Intex citations that is what we're going to use in the author element place now you're probably noticing that there's a little bit of variation to this example I want to explain this first one is what you're going to do if you're only using this Source one time so if I'm just using a few sentences that I've paraphrased I only need to include this right here that's perfect but let's say this is an article or a source that I'm going to use a couple times or perhaps I mention the World Health Organization later on in my document what APA would like you to do in this case is the first Intex citation they want you to type out the full naming and then in Brackets use abbreviation so that way the next time you use a citation you only have to use the abbreviated shortened version it just makes your paper look a little less cluttered neater so they say and the Nar narrative citation as you can see follows the same formatting standards nothing really changes there but now let's move on to scenarios where an element is missing or even a few less common Intex citation examples so so in this first one what if the author is unknown meaning there's no person responsible for the work or a group author well it's quite simple you want to use the shortened title or quite frankly you want to use whatever element is first in your reference list entry so in this case you can see the title is APA Citation guidelines I do want to point out that in the Intex citation you want to keep the text italicized so that way it's Crystal Clear what this is in other words that you are indeed using the title element and that way the reader can easily match it to the reference list entry so last thing I want to touch on here is that it APA does ask that you use a shortened title but because the title in this example is already pretty short and concise you're not going to shorten that any further but sometimes a title can be quite long and if it is you kind of want to just bring it in so you get the gist of it and that it's easily accessible to the reader I will say unknown authors is fairly uncommon however what is significantly more common is a no day scenario so this is when the reference list does not have a date in this particular entry and so just as we did in the previous example you're going to use well whatever you have in the reference list entry for the date element in this case you're going to use the abbreviated n d uncapitalized with periods but okay we have two examples left and these are going to be the less common scenarios but are still important to know how to do so in this first one you're citing more than one study at a time the scenario here is that you've researched a few different articles three in this example and they all allude to the same information so your research multiple sources to get a feel for one one objective if you will and you build a paraphrase that's kind of a combination of all three so naturally you need to cite all three of those studies after that paraphrase and this is simple all you're going to do is include the three citations following formatting standards for their reference list entries and note they're simply separated by semicolons so after the date element you have a semicolon followed by the next citation a semicolon followed by the final citation and then the narrative citation note how it follows the same traditional formatting St standards for narrative Intex citations in that the word and is spelled out in last quick note about citing more than one study at once you're probably not going to need any Source locators here because if you're going to directly quote any one of these sources you probably want to site that Source on its own okay the last example is what you do if you have two different sources but the elements for the Intex citation are the same so the case here is when you have the same author two completely different works but they're published in the same year so this is again uncommon but a very simple quick fix what APA would like you to do is use a lowercase letter in your reference list entries to decipher between the two therefore that's exactly what you're going to do in your intext citation after the date element so as you can see here we have a for the first one B for the second one so in our Intex citation that's what we're going to use to decipher between the two different sources like I said this is definitely not a common scenario but it does happen in certain areas where you have a heavy weight researcher that contributes a lot of information to a particular field so at this point you should be pretty tired of seeing my face hearing my voice but on the off chance that you're not do check out this video next if you want to see how I would actually write an academic paper