APA Help (7th Edition)

• When a reference has two authors, cite both names every time the reference occurs in text. See section 8.17 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020) for more guidance.
• If you are citing a work with three or more authors, use (First authors last name et al., Year of Publication) on every citation throughout your document.
  • To avoid confusion, when in-text citations of multiple works with three or more authors shorten to the same form, write out as many author's names as necessary to distinguish the citations, and abbreviate the remaining names to "et al." in every citation.
    • (Smith, Jones, Anderson, et al., 2012).
    • (Smith, Jones, Andrews, et al., 2012).
• Use "et al." to shorten lists of authors' or editors' names to make referencing citations easier for works with three or more authors.
• et al. is the Latin abbreviation for ‘and others', and should not be used in place of only one author's name.
• When using a corporation or organization as the author, follow the format for one author.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). 

https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

• When paraphrasing or referring to an idea contained in another work, provide a paragraph or page number, especially when it would help an interested reader locate the relevant passage.
• Use the abbreviation "p." for a quotation from a single page number, "pp." for a quotation from multiple pages, separating the numbers with an en dash (-) for a continuous page range, or a comma (,) for discontinuous pages, and "para." for quotations from a work that does not include page numbers (APA, 2020, p. 270).
• When using a corporation or organization as the author, replace the author's last name with the name of the corporation/organization.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). 

https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-00

• If a quotation has fewer than 40 words enclose the quotation within double quotation marks.
• If a quotation has more than 40 words, leave out quotation marks and indent the entire quotation 1/2 inches from the left margin as a new paragraph (block quotation). See section 8.27 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020) for more information on block quotations.
• When quoting, always provide the author, year and page or paragraph number.
• Use double quotation marks to identify the phrase you have borrowed from your source.
• Use the abbreviation "p." for a quotation from a single page number, "pp." for a quotation from multiple pages, separating the numbers with an en dash (-) for a continuous page range, or a comma (,) for discontinuous pages, and "para." for quotations from a work that does not include page numbers (APA, 2020, p. 270).
• When using a corporation or organization as the author, replace the author's last name with the name of the corporation/organization.
• Spell out the full name of the organization the first time the organization is mentioned followed by the abbreviation
  • When the organization name is first used in a narrative citation, place the abbreviation before the year in parentheses separating the abbreviation and year of publication with a comma.
  • When the organization name is first used in a parenthetical citation, place the abbreviation in square brackets, before the year (APA, 2020, p. 268).
• Use an ellipsis (...) to show you have removed words from within a quotation  Unless the original source being quoted begins or ends with an ellipsis, do not [emphasis added] use an ellipsis to begin or end any quotation. (APA, 2020, p. 275).
• When citing multiple works with the same author and date, use only the year with a letter as part of the in-text citation, even if the reference entry contains a more exact date. See sections 8.19 and 9.47 for more information on ordering references with the same author and date.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). 

https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

• Use a short title enclosed in quotation marks for the parenthetical citation. (In the example above, the full heading was “Do Markets Supply the Types of Foods Desired by Consumers?.”)
• If the document includes a heading and no paragraph or page numbers, cite the heading and the number of the paragraph following the heading.
• Use the abbreviation para. for paragraph.
• Credit direct quotations of on-line material by giving author, year and page number in parentheses.
• Use double quotation marks to identify the phrase you have borrowed from your source.
• When using a corporation or organization as the author, replace the author's last name with the name of the corporation/organization.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). 

https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

APA recommends describing how students used AI models like ChatGPT in the paper, followed by the prompt used and any part of the relevant response. ChatGPT results are not retrievable by others; however, since there is not a person communicating, the author of the algorithm should be credited with an in-text citation and reference list entry.

When prompted with “What is the atomic number for Mercury?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated "The atomic number for Mercury is 80” (OpenAI, 2023).

For more examples of citing ChatGPT see the American Psychological Association Style website

Please refer to the Academic Honor Code section (pp. 31-33) of the WCU Student Handbook for appropriate uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University. 

Secondary sources, those sources that refer to content from another source, should be used sparingly.  If available, you should always try to find the original (primary) source, i.e. When the author(s) you are reading cite someone else's work, you should always try to find the cited work.

For example, if you read a work by Raphan and Friedman (2014), in which they cite Welch et al. (2011), and you are unable to read the original Welch et al. (2011) work, you will cite Welch et al. followed by Raphan and Friedman with only Raphan and Friedman appearing in the reference list.

"40% of people without any symptoms will show damaged knee cartilage (meniscal tear) with MRI scans; MRI scans will show bulging lumbar discs in more than 50% of people with no back pain" (Welch et al., 2011, p. 36, as cited in Raphan & Friedman, 2014, p. 590).

More information on secondary sources is available on page 258 on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) or at https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/secondary-sources