Helpful hints to assist a student with APA
APA (American Psychological Association) is a format style used by most writers to cite sources. There are different tips, which can assist a student to identify and how to use APA format. APA contains a different first page, which contains the title, name, and institution. The first page contains a short title, which is the running head, which helps the reader to identify an article or a page. It is easy to recognize APA format because of the running head on the top of every page. The title appears in capital letters in which it does not exceed fifty characters.
The first page of the document includes the running head followed by a colon, then the title of the paper in capital letters. The other pages differ from the first page because they contain the running head without the actual words (running head) the title and the page number. The work of the writer begins from the second page. The first page contains the topic, name, and institution in which they are all centered.
Example of reference page in APA
The referencing in APA format is different from other formats, for example, the MLA format. References are on the last page after completing the assignment. All work cited in the assignment must be included in the references in which the list is arranged in alphabetical order, starting with the author's surname or the title of the book if the author's name is not given. Although the writers indicate their full names in the document, their initials should appear unless in the case where a book has different authors who have similar initials and surname. When writing the name of the author one should not exceed eight authors. In such cases, one should write the first six followed by three ellipses then the name of the last author. The author’s names should appear in the same way listed in the source document. The author's name should appear in capital letters.
Minimal capitalization should be observed when writing the titles, subtitles, book parts, journals, and books. When writing the title of the book, only the first letter should be capitalized or the titles that have a proper noun. The title of the book and the journals are italicized when the document is typed or underlined when the document is hand written. The year of publishment follows the name of the authors in which the year is in brackets, the title of the book in italics, the town in which the document was published then the name of the publisher.
Example:
References
Parker, B. (1997). Criminal Justice. New York: Dutton.
Reamer, F. G. (2003). Criminal lessons: case studies and commentary on crime and justice. New York: Columbia University Press.
Crime and Justice History Group. (1980). Criminal justice history. New York: Crime and Justice History Group.
Bhui, H. S. (2009). Race and criminal justice. London: Sage.
Robards, K. (2011). Justice. New York: Gallery Books.
Examples of in-text citation in APA format
This is a summarization of a quote from certain authors work in which what you have quoted must reflect the references one has stated. The in-text citation does not contain many details; unlike the references, it contains the last name of the author and the year of publication. Here are examples of in-text citations:
1. Criminal justice is a system that the government uses to control, mitigate, and sanction the people, who break the laws of the country in which the criminals are, penalized and others taken to rehabilitation centers (Robards, 2011).
2. The judge is the legal advisor in implementing the laws. The judge heads the criminal cases and determines whether the witnesses are lying. The judge applies the law to determine whether, the accused is guilty or not (Reamer, 2003).
References
American Psychological Association. (2009). APA college dictionary of psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Zedeck, S. (2014). APA dictionary of statistics and research methods. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
