In research papers it is necessary to make reference to other texts and these references are known as textual citations. Thus, a textual citation consists in literally copying a fragment of an author in a document . On the other hand, the citation is part of the bibliography , which is the set of textual references used in the research.
How is a textual citation according to the APA model?
The acronyms APA stand for “American Psychological Association”, which is the standard procedure commonly used to make textual citations. According to this procedure, the rule used is the following: author’s last name followed by the year in parentheses and that refers to the cited work or an introductory text. Finally, the quotation in quotation marks accompanied by parentheses indicates the exact page of the quoted book.
An example of this explanation is the following: Hume (1987) claims in relation to skepticism that ” doubt is part of knowledge” (p.36). If the citation is longer, a similar formula is used: author’s surname (year), an introductory text followed by a punctuation mark: and then a space in which a complete textual citation without quotation marks is introduced; at the end of the text, the page of the cited book is included in parentheses.
APA standards employ three objectives:
1) that the textual citation procedure is homogeneous ;
2) that the author of a text present evident proofs that demonstrate that their words are not plagiarism;
3) that the research carried out takes place according to ethical criteria.
Textual citation and paraphrase
The quotation literally reproduces the words of an author. By contrast, the paraphrase communicates an author’s idea not in his exact words but in his own words. The use of paraphrase has a less formal character than textual quotation, but both forms of quotation express the same idea: respect for the ideas of other authors.
The bibliographic reference on the internet
The data in a bibliographic reference varies depending on the source and type of author. To reference information obtained from a website, the following information must be provided: author’s surname in capital letters separated from the name by a comma, title of the work, electronic medium, edition number, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, date of citation and, finally, it must be indicated if the reference is available on the internet and then the link.
