Spring/Summer 2020 Business 100: APA Citation

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The APA discourages citation of websites, and so has minimal guidance on how to do it:
"How do you cite website material that has no author, no year, and no page numbers?"
"How do you reference a web page that lists no author?"

For assignments in Business 100, citation according to the American Psychology Association (APA) has two parts:

1) In-text citation

2) Reference list

The in-text citation is short, in parentheses, and comes immediately after any quotation, fact, number, or idea that came from your research.

The reference list is a list of every resource you used for quotations, facts, numbers or ideas. It includes detailed information on each resource, should be on a separate page, and is in alphabetical order.

APA from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University

This is a very reliable and useful resource for APA-style citation. Navigate using the links on the left-hand side.

Important links:
In-text Citation: Basics
In-text Citation: Author/Authors
Reference List: Basic Rules
Reference List: Author/Authors
Reference List: Articles in Periodicals
Reference List: Books
Reference List: Other Print Resources
Reference List: Electronic Sources
Reference List: Other Non-Print Sources

Include the author and year of publication.

   The company "employs 52 people full-time" (Smith, 2012).

If the "author" is a corporation or organization, use the name as the author:

   Microsoft is "is committed to responsible business practices and service to communities" (Microsoft, 2016).

If there is no author, use the document title in quotation marks:

   Some sources say that "32% of eligible voters don't vote" ("Electoral Statistics", 2011).

The Reference List includes detailed information on the sources you have cited.

Often, online resources will not have a specific rule. You have to use your judgment and decide how to create the Reference List entry to the best of your ability. Consult the OWL for guidance and rules.

Examples for citing reports or documents from online databases:

Title of Report/Document. (Date or n.d.). Name of database or webpage. Retrieved from [URL].

WestJet Airlines (2020). Business Market Research Collection. Retrieved from https://login.libproxy.uregina.ca:8443/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.uregina.ca/docview/1860764465?accountid=13480

Tips:

1. The first part of the Reference List entry must be identical to what is in the in-text citation.

2. Often, sources will be a combination of type (for example, an online magazine article will require you combine the rules for citing a periodical and the rules for citing an electronic resource).

3. The purpose of citation is to make sure your reader can easily find where you got your quotation, number, fact, or idea from. When you're not sure what to do, ask a friend to let you know if your citation makes it clear where you got your information.

Suggested guidelines for citing a newspaper article from a database that does not provide the name of an author:

1. If there is both a newswire/wirefeed service AND a newspaper title listed, use the newswire/wirefeed name in place of the author's name, for both in-text citation and the reference list entry:

In-text: (wirefeed, date)

Reference list: Wirefeed. (Date) Title of article. Title of Newspaper. Database name. URL

2. If only a newswire/wirefeed service is listed, use its name instead of an author:

In-text: (wirefeed, date)

Reference list: Wirefeed. (Date) Title of article. Wirefeed name. Database name. URL

3. If only the title of a newspaper is listed, use the title of the article as the main reference:

In-text: ("Title of article," date)

Reference list: Title of Article. (date) Title of Newspaper. Database name. URL

What if there's no author?

Many business databases and corporate websites do not have individual authors. The best solution is often to treat the citation as having an unknown author, where you use the title of the item you're citing instead; sometimes you can identify an organizational author, such as the database company or the corporation that made the website.

What if there's no date of publication?

Be careful -- not having a date of publication means you can't know how up-to-date the information is.

However, you can always put "n.d." (which stands for "no date") to show your professor that you tried to find a publication date and couldn't. Do not leave it blank if you can't find a date.