For individual research help, schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian.
For this assignment, you will format your paper and cite your sources in APA style. The following provides a brief introduction to APA citation styling. For more help, check out the following:
Understanding APA style can help as you navigate information sources which have also been formatted in APA style. You will know how to:
For this assignment, you need to understand how to format your paper and how to create a citation for an outside source. APA citations have two parts, the in-text citation and the full citation in the References list. The following videos will help with both parts using an example from the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Be careful: generated and suggested citations from databases are often slightly wrong. ALWAYS proofread your citation even if you get it from a reputable source like a library database or Google Scholar.
Citing the Occupational Outlook Handbook in APA Style from NOVA Libraries on Vimeo.
Learn how to convert the suggested citation for entries in the Occupational Outlook Handbook to APA Style.
At the bottom of each entry in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, you will find a blue dashed box with a suggested citation. This citation isn't in APA style. To transform the citation into an APA style citation you need to break the suggested citation down into its individual parts.
Here is the suggested citation for the Training and Development Specialist profile:
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Training and Development Specialists,
at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/training-and-development-specialists.htm (visited September 19, 2022).
For the APA citation we need the following information:
In this instance, there are two authors: Bureau of Labor Statistics & U.S. Department of Labor. These are known as corporate authors. As you write your paper, this means that you will use the name as it appears in your References list. If it were an individual you would put the last name first, followed by their initials. Also, when there is more than one author, use the ampersand (&) before the last author.
The suggested citation doesn't include the date published, only the date accessed. However, if we go back to the webpage and scroll to the bottom we'll find the "Last Modified Date." This is the best date to use as the publication date. In your References list, you will put the year, followed by month and date, in parenthesis (ex. 2022, Sept. 8) after the author. If you are citing a website that doesn't have a publication date or last modified date, use the abbreviation n.d. in parentheses to indicate no date.
The title of this webpage is Training and Development Specialist. This information will be written like a sentence in APA style and be in italics. After the date in parentheses, put a period. Then write the title of the webpage only capitalizing the first word and any proper nouns in italics. In this case, you would write Training and development specialist, followed by a period.
The website in this citation is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This will follow the title of the webpage and will be written as you traditionally write a title with all the first letters capitalized for major words. It will also be in italics. So for this example, after the period following the title of the webpage, put Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Following the title of the website include the full URL, including the https:// to the exact page you are citing. In this example, it would be
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/training-and-development-specialists.htm
Bureau of Labor Statistics, & U.S. Department of Labor, (2022, Sept. 8). Training and development specialist. Occupational Outlook Handbook.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/training-and-development-specialists.htm
You'll notice that the second line does not start at the left margin. This is called a hanging indent. All references in the References list at the end of your paper should have hanging indents.
The other part of an APA style citation in the in-text citation. This is an abbreviated citation placed in the body of your text directly after the information you have paraphrased or quoted. After the information you have included in your paper, before the punctuation, put the authors and the year of publication in parentheses.
For example:
In the next decade, the need for training and development specialists is expected to grow by eight percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics, & U.S. Department of Labor, 2022).
If you are directly quoting text, you should also include the location information of the quote. Typically this would be a page number, however, if you are quoting from a webpage that doesn't have page numbers, you can use a section heading, or leave off the location information if there are no sections. Be sure that you designated that you are quoting text by using quotation marks around the exact words used in the original source.
The outlook is good for Training and Development Specialists. "Employment of training and development specialists is projected to grow 8 percent from 2021 to 2031" (Bureau of Labor Statistics, & U.S. Department of Labor, Job Outlook, 2022).