The Writing Center

by Ruth Rogers ’07

Students new to APA style often confuse these terms, so here’s a quick guide to what’s what:

A quote is when you exactly reproduce someone else’s words in your text. In the following example, the quote is shown in bold type:

Coping strategies are “a means of dealing with stress to maintain or achieve well-being” (Pettigrew, 2007, p. 537).

A citation is a notation in your text that refers the reader to a reference containing detailed information about the source of your information. Citations are used any time you use information from another source in your text. That information may be an exact quote, or it may be facts or ideas that you put into your own words. Either way, you must include a citation. The citation in the following example appears in bold type:

Coping strategies allow an individual to have a sense of well-being during times of stress (Pettigrew, 2007).

A reference contains details about the source of your information so that your readers can go look it up for themselves, if they want to. It is listed on the reference page, and includes author(s), title, date, publisher, journal name and volume, etc., like this:

• Pettigrew, A. C. (2007). Self-management: Stress and time. In P. S. Yoder-Wise (Ed.), Leading and managing in nursing (4th ed., pp. 531-554). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

So, to wrap it up, if you quote something written by another author, or if you paraphrase what another author has said, you must include a citation in your text that points to a reference on your reference page that tells where you got that information.