APA Tutorial: Welcome to the BSC APA Tutorial!

Welcome to the BSC Library's APA Tutorial!

This tutorial will review the basics of formatting your papers and citing your sources in APA Style. Please note that this tutorial is NOT intended to be a replacement for acquiring the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The manual is the definitive source for APA rules and provides more thorough guidelines. The official APA Style website is also an authoritative resource. 

Why Do I Need to Learn How to Cite My Sources? 

1. To avoid plagiarism: In order to ethically use information that you get from others, you must always cite your sources. 
2. To lend credibility to your writing: Citing quality sources shows that you have thoroughly researched your topic and strengthens the arguments you make in your paper.  
3. To help your instructor locate your sources: Citing sources according to a standard, consistent format (such as APA) helps the readers of your work to quickly locate and verify the sources you used in your paper. 

Why APA? (Beyond the fact that my instructor told me to.)

APA Style was originally developed to make sure papers were formatted consistently within the fields of psychology and anthropology and is now used across a variety of disciplines (American Psychological Association, 2020, About APA Style). Most courses at Bay State require the use of APA Style.