Ask yourself these questions:
If the answer is no, you should cite.
An APA citation has two parts:
In text (immediately after a paraphrase or a direct quote) - to let the person who's reading your assignment know that this isn't your idea and to give them a quick way to know who's idea it is
Reference list (at the end of your assignment) - to allow the reader to find the article or book that the idea came from. This will give them enough information that they can locate the article or book themselves and find the information that you included in your assignment.
To see how citations look in a paper, check out this sample paper, featured on the APA Style Blog.
Remember to look for the type of source (for example, book, article, website, etc.) and then find the format for that source. Use the templates to create your citation and use the examples to check your work. I've also put a few examples of citations for materials that you'll be citing below.
Follow the format for a book to cite any of your textbooks. The format is different for print books versus e-books so be sure to select the correct version. For example:
Bird, D.L., & Robinson, D.S. (2020). Modern dental assisting (13th ed.). Elsevier.
(Note: your Modern Dental Assisting textbook does not have a DOI so the reference list entry for both the print version and e-book version is the same.)
Follow the most applicable format under Course Materials to cite materials that are specific to one of your courses. For example, information from a module within your D2L/Brightspace course page that was created by a SAIT instructor:
SAIT. (2020). Outcome 1: Title of outcome. In DENT 202: Preventive Procedures 1 [Module]. D2L/Brightspace. https://learn.sait.ca
(Note: You only need to cite the outcome, not the specific objective within an outcome.)
What if I'm citing multiple Brightspace Outcomes by the same author?
In this case, you can add a letter after the date to differentiate between the outcomes. By adding the letter you can easily distinguish between outcomes in both your in-text citations and your reference list entries. For example:
SAIT. (2020a). Outcome 1: Title of outcome. In DENT 202: Preventive Procedures 1 [Module]. D2L/Brightspace. https://learn.sait.ca
SAIT. (2020b). Outcome 3: Title of outcome. In DENT 202: Preventive Procedures 1 [Module]. D2L/Brightspace. https://learn.sait.ca
Follow the format for a webpage. For example:
Oral-B. (n.d.). Why switch to an electric toothbrush.
https://www.oralb.ca/en-ca/product-collections/benefits-of-electric-toothbrush
(Note: In this example, the author's name is the same as the title of the website so the title of the website was omitted.)
Follow the format for an online image. For example:
Actinomycotic gingivitis (confirmed by biopsy) [Online image]. (n.d.). Stedman's Online. Retrieved from
https://stedmansonline.com/lww/view-large/color-plate/19214580
Note: Many images will not have all of the pieces of information that you need to create a citation. If you are missing information, scroll down to the bottom of the Online Images tab in the SAIT Library APA guide to find your scenario and its solution in the "What if..." box.
What if I'm a student and I took the photograph myself?
Scroll down to the bottom of the Online Images tab in the SAIT Library APA guide to find this scenario and its solution in the "What if..." box.
Complete the University of Alberta's APA Citation Tutorial
