VNG Project on Nursing and Culture: Writing & Citing

Most health science programs at ACC require that you document your sources using the American Psychological Association (APA) format. In APA format, you briefly identify your sources in the text of your paper, then give the full information in the Reference List at the end of the paper. There are several resources available to help you use APA format:

APA Documentation Guide from ACC Library Services. Also available in PDF format.

KnightCite Citation Service -- this site allows you to fill in a form that creates an APA citation for you. It's not magic though. You have to know the elements of a citation to fill in for it to produce correct citations.

Learning APA Style -- There are several new changes with the new 6th ed. (2009) of the APA style manual. Learn more about the basics of APA style and some of the most recent changes here.

If you find article citations from a resource like PubMed that does not provide APA citations, you can use a Google Scholar search to get a basic citation. You'll still need to double-check for accuracy and correct the indentation, but it's a good starting point. Just do the following:

• Go to Google Scholar
• Enter the title of the article, part of the title, or a combination of the title and author
• Find the article in the results list, and click on the quotation symbol below it. This will pull up a sample citation in various formats, including APA

This method should work for any EBSCOHost database such as CINAHL, Health Source - Nursing/Academic Edition, MEDLINE (EBSCO), Health Source - Consumer Edition, Consumer Health Complete, Alt HealthWatch or Salud en Español.

This demonstration show ways to get APA citations from Gale databases such as Health Reference Center Academic.

The following tutorial on Academic Honesty is a great place to learn about why we cite sources in academic work and provides tips on how to avoid plagiarism.