December 4th to December 10th, 2011
What does “APA” stand for? What does
MLA stand for?
 “APA” stands for “American Psychological Association”
and
 “MLA” stands for “Modern Language Association.”
Who uses APA style?
Hundreds of professional journals use APA, and over half the
departments on this campus use it or an APA-like
documentation style: psychology, education, sociology, social
work, human services, nursing, economics, political science,
some areas of English, anthropology, and business.
Who uses MLA style?
According to their website, “MLA style has been widely
adopted by schools, academic departments, and instructors
for over half a century. The association's guidelines are also
used by over 1,100 scholarly and literary journals, newsletters,
and magazines and by many university and commercial
presses.
The MLA's guidelines are followed throughout North
America and in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Taiwan, and other
countries around the world.
Source: http://www.mla.org/style
What is a documentation style, exactly?
Documentation is written information. Style refers to a
particular system of rules. A documentation style, then, is a
style for written information.
More specifically, a documentation style is a system of rules
for acknowledging (documenting) the sources you use to
write a paper.
Is it only about documenting sources?
The system of rules also addresses the format of your paper.
In other words, the system of rules also indicates things like
where to write your name on a page and how to number your
pages.
Why all the fuss?
What is important to note is that a documentation system is
a "systematic method"; that is, APA and MLA are systematic
methods even though at times it may seem as if there is no
pattern to a documentation style.
This system sees to it that things are done in a consistent way
What is the basic system?
Like most documentation systems, APA and MLA are both a
two-part documentation system. This system works like this:
Each time you quote, summarize, or paraphrase someone
else's ideas, you provide information in your paper—most
often the author’s or authors’ last names and the page
number. In the case of APA, you also provide the year that
the work was published. This is the first part of the two-part
system.
Smith (1999) argues that “students prefer to text their teachers” (p. 34).
What’s the second part?
The second part is the page at the end of your document
where you list your sources. In MLA, this page has the title of
“Works Cited” and in APA, it is called “References.”
This is where you put all the other information about the
source.
Please note that you do not put quotation marks around the
titles, though.
So where is info documented in the paper?
Acknowledged sources as close as possible to the information
cited. That means that you put your acknowledgement in the
same sentence as the source—not at the bottom of the page.
Meyer (2010) claimed that teachers prefer email when communicating
with students (p. 40).
Research shows that teachers prefer email when communicating with
students (Meyer, 2010, p. 40).
Can I mix styles or make one up?
Mixing documentation styles would make it difficult for
readers to locate your sources. Making up documentation
styles would lead to confusion because the style--the system-would be meaningful only to you.
Why is it so important?
 Ethical obligation: Writers have an ethical obligation to
acknowledge the ideas, words, or work of others they have
used in their papers.
 Academic courtesy: Readers and researchers of the same
subject may be intrigued by a reference to a particular work
or author. Complete publication information will greatly
simplify finding the original work or passage.
continued
More reasons for its importance
 Credibility: Writers build credibility. References to
sources inform readers that the research has been
thorough.
 Replication interests: Researchers can replicate an
experiment. They can do this only if the steps of the
process have been clearly documented with careful
reference to the works of others in the field.
continued
Most important…
 Protection from plagiarism: Writers protect themselves
from charges of plagiarism. When all sources are
acknowledged, there can be no doubt. If you are found
guilty of plagiarism, you can fail the paper and/or the entire
course.
Is there a strategy?
Figure out the category or subcategory for your source.
 For in-text citations, most of the categories consider the
type of author (e.g., one, unknown, two or more, etc.)
 For end-of text, the categories consider the type of author
as well as the type of source (e.g., translation, government
document, online article from a database).
Then what?
Once you figure out the category, find an example and follow
it, noticing what info they want and the order to use.
If you look on page 640 to 641 in your text, you will see
categories for sources. On the pages that follow, you will see
examples for the categories—for both in-text and end-of-text
citations.
What if I need help?
Writing handbook are good sources for documentation
guidelines. You can also go to the MLA or APA websites or
Purdue University’s OWL website as well as helpful site from
Long Island University.
 http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocAPA.html
 http://www.apastyle.org/
 http://www.mla.org/style