| 1 | Have you checked if your lecturer has any special referencing requirements, for example, page numbers for all citations or no hyperlinks? |
| If your lecturer states specific requirements for referencing, these override CDU APA style. Check in your Learnline unit information or with your lecturer directly. |
| 2 | Have you cited all resources used? |
| Whenever you use information from a resource in your text, an in-text citation is needed to show your reader where you found the information. |
| 3 | Have you used an appropriate level of citation? |
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Consider the number of resources you have used for the assignment (always follow your lecturer’s guidelines). When using information from a source, provide an in-text citation. See Appropriate Levels of Citation: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/appropriate-citation |
| 4 | Have you correctly used parenthetical and narrative citations? |
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Parenthetical citation: The author and the date, appear in parentheses (brackets) separated by a comma. A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence. Narrative citation: The author is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence and the date appears in brackets immediately after the author’s name. |
| 5 | Quotes of fewer than 40 words: Are your quotes in double quotation marks, and have you included the page or paragraph number in the in-text citation? |
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When words are not your own (quotes), you must clearly signal this in the text with quotation marks, or you will be plagiarising. See APA: Quotations for examples: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations |
| 6 | Quotes of more than 40 words: Is this quote necessary, or could you summarise/paraphrase the text? Have you followed the rules for formatting a quote of 40 words or more? |
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Treat a quote of 40 words or more as a block quote. Omit quotation marks and start the quote on a new line. Indent the whole block. Add a citation after the final punctuation. See APA: Quotations for examples: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations |
| 7 | Have you changed a quote to make it fit grammatically or because it contains irrelevant or unnecessary information? Have you followed the APA guidelines for changing a quote? |
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When leaving out information in a quote, insert an ellipsis (three dots). When adding or slightly changing words within a quote for reasons of grammar or clarity, indicate the change with square brackets. Example: “Drug prevention … [efforts] backed this up” (Gardner, 2007, p. 49). |
| 8 | Do you need to use a specific part/section of a resource with no page number? |
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If you don’t have a page number, you can use a section number, paragraph number, or the identifier/title the resource uses in its place. For example: (ACARA, n.d., ACELA1443), (Bueler, 2000, para. 5), (NMBA, 2016, Standard 3.1, p. 4) |
| 9 | Have you followed the ‘et al.’ rule when citing 3 or more authors? |
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When citing a resource with three or more authors, only show the first named author, followed by et al. (et al. means ‘and others’). Example: (Smith et al., 2019) / According to Smith et al. (2019) families are … |
| 10 | If you have two in-text citations in one parenthesis, are they in alphabetical order and separated by a semi colon? |
| Example: (Miller, 2018; Smith, 2015) |
| 11 | Have you used information that was already cited from another resource (secondary citation)? Have you checked if you could access the original resource? |
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If you can’t access the original source to read, cite the work as a secondary citation. For example: You read Lister’s article, which refers to Miller’s ideas. If you can’t find Miller’s work, cite the ideas like this: … of social justice (Miller, 1984, as cited in Lister, 2007) OR Miller’s (1984) simple definition of social justice (as cited in Lister, 2007) … You include the Lister article in your reference list: |
| 12 | Have you explained all your abbreviations before using them? |
| It is possible to use an abbreviated version of an organisational author in the text or a citation, but you must use it in full the first time. In-text example: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2014). Your reference list should always include the author’s full name, no abbreviation. |
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