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- Use of words and phrases from sources: Use quotation marks and a full citation when using the words or phrases of one of your sources. Changing a few words or the order of words in a passage is not paraphrasing. Always use a full citation including a page or paragraph number (for sources like website that do not have page numbers) in every citation for a quotation.
- Incorrect format and punctuation in references
- Use a hanging indent and double spacing for references.
- Use a period after the author name and after the parentheses for year. Do not include abbreviations or et al. in references.
- The punctuation for journal articles for APA is different from AMA format (used by PubMed). Example of correct format (note italics for journal title and volume, issue in parentheses not in italics, comma before page numbers):
American Journal of Public Health, 112(5), 1133-1357.
- Do not include the date of retrieval for electronic sources except for Wikis and similar sources where the content is subject to change.
- Include a full date only for newspapers, blogs, press releases, and similar sources.
- References ending with web address or doi number do not have a period at the end.
- Incorrect format for citations
- The punctuation at the end of a sentence comes after the citations
- Quotation marks end before the citations
- Citations for quotations must include a page or paragraph number. Abbreviate page as p. and multiple pages as pp. Abbreviate paragraph as para.
- There is no comma between the author’s last name and et al. Example: (Smith et al., 2010).
- Use lower case letters to distinguish between two sources with the same author published in the same year. Example citations: (CDC, 2010a) and (CDC, 2010b). Use the same letter after the year in the reference as well so that your citations and references match.
- Spell out the full name of an organization in the first citation or use in the paper, and introduce an accepted abbreviation in brackets within a citation or in parentheses within the text. Example
Surveillance activities include the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), both conducted annually (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2014).
Citing Healthy People 2030: The author of Healthy People 2030 is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). You may want to cite several sections of this website in your paper. You may use one reference for the entire source and then include the section or objective number in the citation so that you reader can locate your source. See example below. Alternatively, you may write references for each specific page or section of the website and use a matching citation.
“Many of the strongest predictors of health and well-being fall outside of the medical care setting” (HHS, 2014, LHI: Clinical preventive services across life stages, para.4).
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). Healthy People 2020. Retrieved from http://www.healthypeople.gov/
