For this week’s discussion board, I’d like for us to practice working with APA citations and formatting. While some of you might have the forms down well, it tends to be a problem spot for many. So, hopefully by the end of this week you will all feel more comfortable in this area.

Create a new paper in a Word document using APA formatting (this needs to be done in Word and attached to your post). This means including a title page, using Times New Roman size 12 font, double spacing, indenting new paragraphs, and one inch margins. This is all described on p. 484 of the Hacker text, and you can see an example on p. 488. Next, you will need to use three different sources for the remainder of the exercise, and they each need to be a different type (i.e. website, journal article, book, etc.). Ideally, you should use sources that you have already gathered for your report, but that’s not a requirement– the important thing is to practice using a variety of sources.

For each of the sources, you will need to do two things: cite a direct quotation, and cite a paraphrase. You don’t have to write a lot here, and really, it doesn’t have to make a lot of sense what you do write. The point of this exercise is to properly introduce and document quotes and paraphrases from your different sources. Citing an author from an article is slightly different from citing a website with no author, so this is a chance to practice to get these forms right. Finally, you will need a reference page at the end of the document, with all three sources properly cited. Again, use the Hacker text (or any of the other resources given this week) to follow APA formatting precisely.

For your participation posts, comment on your classmates’ work, pointing out things that need modifying (or why the particular forms used are correct).