Workshops

Read or view the materials listed below and then take the quiz (link located further down the page). There is an optional section on the quiz to alert a mentor or instructor, that you name, that you satisfactorily completed the quiz (you won't be able to answer the quiz questions without doing the readings/tutorials).

The APA style guide (APA = American Psychological Association) is one of many citation style guides (others include MLA and Chicago) designed to set standards for and govern how scholarly publications are published. While these style guides are not designed for student assignments per se, they are often used by professors to get you in the habit of producing quality research writing and standardized citations.

You are not expected to memorize all the rules of the APA style, but you should know some of the basics and where to go to look up specifics when needed. In addition, some essential academic writing techniques will be discussed (e.g., paraphrasing).

Questions to consider as you work through the materials below:

• What are some practical reasons professors ask me to cite my sources?
• When do I need to include citations in my paper?
• What's the difference between an in-text citation and an end-of-text citation on the References Page?
• What are narrative in-text citations and how can I use them?
• How are References Page citations ordered and formatted?
• What is a paraphrase and what is the advantage of doing that as opposed to a direct quote?

Note: the website has been redesigned since the video was produced. The Citations help link is now in the right column, under 'Quick Links.'

A quick word about APA citations generated by tools within library databases, online citing tools such as Zotero, or generative AI such as chatGPT:

Any machine that generates an APA-formatted citation or bibliography can, and often does, contain formatting errors, whether due to incorrect or incomplete metadata or trouble handling complex formatting issues. In addition, refer to the syllabus of your course for details on allowed AI use, which can differ from course to course. Errors are especially prevalent in author names and the capitalization of titles.

While such citation generating tools can be a great place to begin creating citations, each output should be carefully proofread against the general APA guidelines and corrected as needed, especially the author and title formatting.

This practice is optional, but strongly recommended. Taking the extra time to do this now will save you a bundle of time later when assignments are due.

For practice, the best method is to actually create some citations. Refer to to the APA OWL Guide and APA Examples page for help doing this. Also note that any citations generated by a library database, generative AI or other tool should be checked for accuracy - they often contain errors (especially in the capitalization of article titles):

1. Given the following quote and source, use Microsoft Word to write out 2 APA in-text citations - one using a parenthetical citation and another using a narrative citation:
   • "lying and leaking have an equilibrium relationship...seeding and smearing involve...using Internet trolls or botnets on social media, deep fakes, or spoofing websites to facilitate keeping the source of disinformation hidden."
   • from page 669 of: Arce, D. (2024). Disinformation strategies. Defence and Peace Economics, 35(6), 659–672. https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2024.2302236
2.  Create a brief APA References page for the following 2 sources (these are real world examples so they will likely require you to look up formatting details and examples as described in the main video above, which you'll need to do for your assignments anyway):
   • https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-spread-of-synthetic-media-on-x/
   • https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-misinformation-spreads-and-why-we-trust-it/

Work through the content above and take this quiz:

• APA Workshop Quiz


• [Note that without carefully watching the video tutorial and doing the practice exercises you will probably not be able to answer many of the questions]