The principle

The principle of the APA style consists of two steps. You list a brief reference to your quote or paraphrase in you text and then a detailed description to it in a bibliography.



One principle, many variants

You often have to deal with different types of sources - books, articles, websites, etc. These all need to be described in different ways. It is not necessary to know all the rules by heart, there are plenty of manuals you can use to look them up (both online and hardcopy). Here, we will show you some of the most common types of citation. It would be a good idea to learn at least these few by heart.

Let us go back to those two steps. We will explain the most important rules for each separate step.