LANG 1406 Academic English for Business Studies

APA style (American Psychological Association) and AMA (American Management Association) styles are widely used in the field of business. APA is also used in psychology and social sciences.

Your LANG 1406 teachers expect you to use this citation style for your projects. You may also have to use it later in your university writing. So, let's learn APA!

Watch this short tutorial (3 min 54 sec) on citing references in APA 7th.

In APA, you have to make two types of citation in your writing

• In-text-citations in the midst of your writing (essay) - very short
• End-of-paper References  - longer

In-text citation

• If the author can be identified, write the author's surname (family name, last name) and publication year in brackets:

  Photography provides the model for modern technoscientific vision (Garlick, 2009), ...

• If the author can't be identified, write the first few words of the article title and the year, use double quotation marks around the title:

  A smartphone might consume up to 15Mbps downstream ("Can can you," 2013)...

End-of-paper References

• Include all sources you have cited (make in-text reference to), except personal communications, in your paper
• General format:
  Author surname, Initials. (Year). Article title. Magazine title, volume no. (issue no.), page range.
  Author surname, Initials. (Year). Article title. Newspaper title, page number.
  If the author can't be identified, article title will come first.
  Precede page numbers for newspaper articles with p. or pp.
• Sources should be listed in alphabetical order
• Examples:

What about indirect sources?

For example, you read about Smith's idea (or research findings) in Nicholson's paper but you did not read Smith's article yourself. In this case, you CANNOT cite a source that you have not read, so you need to indicate that the information is obtained from a secondary source:

1. List the source you have read (Nicholson's paper) in the reference list, and
2. Make an in-text citation, such as
   • Smith's survey (as cited in Nicholson, 2020) showed ...
   • According to Nicholson (2020), Smith's survey says ...

What about personal communications?

Personal communications may be private letters, memo, electronic communications (e.g., e-mail), personal interviews, telephone communications, etc. Because they are not considered recoverable data, personal communications are not required in the reference list, but you have to cite personal communications within the text. Give the initials, follow by the surname (family name, last name) of the communicator, and provide the exact date as possible.

In-text Reference = (T.W. Lau, personal communication, September 2, 2012)

See A Guide to Good Referencing Skills for more tips on how to paraphrase and summarize sources.

APA style

Guideline from APA:

• How to cite ChatGPT - APA Style Blog (updated on Feb 23, 2024)
   

Suggested practices:

1. Cite AI-generated text

• cite the content as software or algorithm's output (rather than personal communication as there's no actual person communicating)
• describe how you used ChatGPT or other AI models in the Method or Introduction of your work
• include the prompt used and any relevant generated text in your paper
• for long responses, consider including them in an appendix

Example:

2. Cite AI model (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude)

• cite the model or tool as software

Examples:

APA style

Guideline from APA:

• There is no official guideline on citing AI-generated images. 
• However, the APA Style blog How to cite ChatGPT (updated Feb 23, 2024), and their replies in the Comment section provides some general advice. 

General advice:

• Explain the methodology of how you used the AI tool in your work (e.g. the prompt you used)
• To create the reference, follow the principles of citing AI-generated text to determine the author, date, title, and source elements for the tool.

Basic format:

• Cite the image (in caption): 

For reference format of citing figures or images in general, you may also refer to APA guidelines on citing Clip Art or Stock Image References, Artwork references, and Sample figures.

• Cite the AI model:

Example: