How to cite multiple book chapters

So what is best practice when we needed to APA cite two or more chapters of a single edited book - or how many chapters can we/should we cite before we should cite the whole book and not individual chapters?

I decided the best strategy was to ask the APA gurus. I told them that I seemed to recall past supervisors requiring that - if I was drawing on more than one chapter, I needed to cite the whole book. But I also wondered if perhaps my impression was conflated with copyright law (that I needed to have a copy of the text and mayn't rely on a one chapter scan)? Plus I had a secondary question: what if we wanted to cite multiple chapters of an UNedited book - i.e. where the authors remain the same throughout? Was it different then? Did we need to cite the chapters or the book?

I had assumed that in both cases it would be the book. However, I was only half right!

The APA style gurus came back to me, which was BRILLIANT. They said that:

"In APA Style (7th ed.), there is no rule that says once [we] cite a certain number of chapters [we] must switch to citing the whole book". In fact, our "choice depends on what [we] actually used and what" gives our reader the most clarity (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). They noted that if we were "using specific chapters from an edited book written by different chapter authors, the best practice is to cite each chapter individually, no matter how many chapters from the same book" we decide to cite. They said this was "because each chapter is effectively its own source, with its own authorship and sometimes its own title and page range" we could "cite three, four, or more chapters from the same edited volume", then referencing "each chapter separately in the reference list".

But. If instead we were "referring to the book as a whole, for example, discussing the editor’s framing, the collection’s overall theme, or multiple ideas that are spread throughout without focusing on chapter authors, then" we should cite the "entire book" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). As they point out, it is more about what we are "drawing on" rather than the number of chapters: substance over form.

And there is a second but. If we are citing an 'authored' book where all chapters are by the same authors, we "simply cite the whole book, because the entire work is by the same author(s)"(APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). We could - if we needed to - direct our reader "to a specific chapter or section", directing our reader to a particular "chapter within the text, but the reference list entry remains the full book" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication).

APA style note that this was more "about scholarly practice" as opposed to "an APA formatting rule" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). 

So that is: reference the entire authored book if using more than one chapter; reference the entire edited book if we are drawing on overall themes; reference individual edited chapter or chapters if drawing on chapter contents alone. 

And now we know.

Sam

 * NotebookLM was used to create the claymation-style infographic components in the image accompanying this post

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How to source a Whakataukī

A student contacted me, wanting to use a Whakataukī (effectively a Māori 'proverb', but the meaning is more 'sharing of a cultural treasure' than something as prosaic as a folk saying) in an assignment, but had found two versions, with two different translations.

The first they found on the Umbrella Learning site, which read "E hara taku toa I te toa takitahi, he toa takitini" (2025), and was translated as "My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective"; the second from Inspiring Communities (2018), "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini", and translated as "My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, it was not individual success but the success of a collective".

Neither of the sources the student had found struck me as being particularly expert. So I suggested that the student do a GoogleScholar search for each of the two versions of the quote, putting each Whakataukī in double quote marks, so the exact text string was sought each time (i.e. "E hara taku toa I te toa takitahi, he toa takitini" and "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini")​ and see what they could find. The reason I suggested a GoogleScholar search is because any sources they found - books or articles - are more likely to be peer-reviewed - so are therefore more reliable, verifiable, valid and, theoretically, more accurate. I wanted them to find a sound source where the interpretation was robust; or, even more important for a Whakataukī, a source with mana. With gravitas.

If they found nothing, I suggested they repeat both searches in their favourite search engine, and see if they could at least find more of a consensus on both the Māori language version and the English translation, and would hopefully find a somewhat more reliable source. 

Luckily, GoogleScholar turned up a great example, complete with appropriate diacriticals: 

"Ēhara tāku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" from a paper by Quigan et al. (2021, p. 283), with the translation provided, "My strength is not mine alone, but that of many" (p. 284).

Even better, the source of this saying was explained as being from the "Pāterangi of Ngāti Kahungunu, who maintained that collective effort of many was necessary for the completion of any task" (p. 284). That suited my student's uses nicely.

It is always worth looking for where something comes from. 

Sam

References:

Inspiring Communities. (2018). Whakatauki information sheet. https://inspiringcommunities.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Inspiring-Communities--Whakatauki-information-sheet.pdf

Quigan, E. K., Gaffney, J. S., & Si’ilata, R. (2021). Ēhara tāku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini: the power of a collective. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 16(2), 283-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2021.1920434

Umbrella Learning. (2025). Introduction to Te Whare Tapa Whā. https://learning.umbrella.org.nz/enrollments/283188040/page/1064978659

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Time for a reminder

I think it is time to remind ourselves to put our citation at the back of the sentence, and avoid, in the immortal words of Professor Pat Thomson, writing a 'laundry list' (2017; and read my take on that here). A student recently asked for feedback, when they had written:

Research by Aubusson et al. (2009) indicates that teacher professional development, supported by a positive school culture, leads to correlations between teachers who actively engage in their learning and development with positive student outcomes. Further research by Alton-Lee (2008) highlighted that when senior leaders actively participate in and lead professional development alongside teachers, they enhance their pedagogical knowledge and understanding.

The student knew this was an "X says, Y says" format, known as a laundry list (Thomson, 2017), but wanted help in transforming this. I suggested a simple reword to bring the topic to the fore, and push the author into the shadows:

Research shows that teacher professional development, if supported by a positive school culture, links teachers who actively engage in their learning and development with positive student outcomes (Aubusson et al., 2009). When senior leaders actively participate in and lead professional development alongside teachers, they enhance their pedagogical knowledge and understanding (Alton-Lee, 2008).

We can see that first sentence still talks about research. We could also start with "Studies show that..." or "A meta-analysis of 150 research projects found that..." or similar. Getting to the 'what' and the 'why' in quickly holds our reader's interest. The 'who' can trail in last 😉

We can also usually save a few words by writing with the topic at the front and the author at the back of the sentence. The laundry list paragraph was 60 words and my edited version was 52. Further, this way of writing has an added bonus: we can group multiple authors writing on the topic together in a multiple works citation at the back of the sentence, adding evidential weight to our claim.

In addition, I would be inclined to reword; perhaps to:

Teachers actively engaging in professional development appear to be linked with more positive student outcomes, providing school culture is positive (Aubusson et al., 2009). Further, when senior leaders actively participate in and lead professional development alongside teachers, leaders enhance their own pedagogical understanding (Alton-Lee, 2008).

However, while saving another 7 words (now 45), the student would need to consider whether this further editing had changed the original authors' meaning. If still aligned with author intent, we have saved 25% of the words, and clarified the meaning. 

While we are getting our heads around writing with the topic first, we begin our draft with notes in the 'X says' format, then, once we have written enough topic fragments accumulated, we can turn our sentences around. But after a while we should get used to writing topic-first from the outset, and save ourselves lots of time 🙂

Sam

References:

Alton-Lee, A. (2008). Designing and Supporting Teacher Professional Development to Improve Valued Student Outcomes [paper]. Education of Teachers Symposium at the General Assembly of the International Academy of Education, Limassol, Cyprus 26 September 2008. https://thehub.sia.govt.nz/assets/documents/42443_Designing-and-Supporting-Teacher-Professional-Development_0.pdf

Aubusson, P., Ewing, R., & Hoban, G. F. (2009). Action learning in schools: reframing teachers’ professional learning and development. Routledge.

Thomson, P. (2017, September 11). Avoiding the laundry list literature review. https://patthomson.net/2017/09/11/avoiding-the-laundry-list-literature-review/

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APA citing webinars

I will often use webinars, or show clips from webinars, in my teaching (with permission, of course). The citation is completely as we would expect with APA (i.e., Author, date). If we want to quote what the author said, we simply add a time stamp for the video - but we do that using US time notation, which is a colon separator, not a full stop; presented as "(Author, date, xx:xx)" (Mueller, 2023).

However, the APA reference for webinars is a little more involved:

• We use the presenter's name as the Author (and as usual, family name, then first name initials so we degenderise the entry). Treat multiple authors as normal (i.e. presenters separated by a comma and an ampersand before the final author).
• Then we have the date that the presentation occurred in brackets: year, month, date (YYYY, Mmmm dd).
• The title of the webinar, with [webinar] in square brackets at the end of the title, and before the full stop.
• Then the name of the organisation or the webinar hoster or publisher, followed by a full stop.
• Then the URL the webinar is located or streamed from.

So that's (Mueller, 2023):

Presenter, A. A. (Year, Month Date). Title of webinar in sentence case [Webinar]. Publisher/Sponsor. URL

Or:

Presenter, A. A., & Presenter, B. B. (Year, Month Date). Title of webinar in sentence case [Webinar]. Publisher/Sponsor. URL

It is easy when we know how.

Sam

Reference:

Mueller, J. (2023, June 7). How to Cite a Webinar in APA. https://www.wikihow.com/Cite-a-Webinar-in-APA

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How to cite and reference TV shows

Ah, the tricky work of correctly APA citing TV shows! It was only when writing a recent post that I realised that I hadn't written an entry on how to formulate the reference for these! And while we think this might be quite simple, in practice, it usually turns out to be slightly more difficult than it appears on the tin.

But the APA 7th edition publication manual will guide us (American Psychological Association, 2019). In the Reference Examples chapter, Audiovisual Media section, the notes suggest that we could use specific writers and/or directors for particular episodes of a series; or we could use the Executive Producer for an entire series (American Psychological Association, 2019). Or - I am guessing - whatever is the simplest to find and use.

So, if we keep our main objective front of mind: that we aim to give our reader a guide back to the source, then keeping our reference as simple as possible will assist us in making an optimal decision. But there is another consideration: what are the conventions for other media types? In the last post, explaining how to reference films (here), we might remember that the director becomes the 'author'. That is something to consider in finding our components for referencing TV shows.

So let's look at the components for citing the series, Get Smart. I turned to Wikipedia (2025) and the Get Smart Wiki (2025) and found the following information:

• Directors: Gary Nelson, Bruce Bilson, Don Adams, James Komack, Earl Bellamy, Howard Morris, Paul Bogart... and the list goes on
• Producers: Jay Sandrich (1965–66), Arnie Rosen (1966–67), Jess Oppenheimer (1967), Burt Nodella (1967–69), Chris Hayward (1969–70)
• Executive Producers: Leonard B. Stern, Arne Sultan (1968–70)
• Writers: Mel Brooks, Buck Henry, Gerald Gardner, Dee Caruso, Stan Burns, Mike Marmer... and this list too goes on and on
• Dates: 1965-1970
• Title: Get Smart
• Production Company: Talent Associates; CBS Productions

My best guess for a simple reference for the entire series is:

Stern, L. B. (Executive Producer), Sultan, A. (Executive Producer, 1968–70). (1965-1970). Get Smart [TV Series, 1-5]. Talent Associates; CBS Productions.

Thus the citation would be:

(Stern & Sultan, 1965-1970)

I hope this helps!

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

Get Smart Wiki. (2025). Get Smart. https://getsmart.fandom.com/wiki/Get_Smart

Wikipedia. (2025). Get Smart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Smart

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Referencing a revised classic book edition

How do we cite and reference a classic book that has been reissued with an introduction from another scholar? I ran into this problem recently when I came to cite the Veblen book in a previous post (here). Luckily we have the expertise of the American Psychological Association (2019) to draw on, who explain that "A republished work is one that went out of print (i.e., was no longer available) and then was published again; this is common for older works" (p. 302). We simply include the the original year of publication - or the approximate original publication year if an estimated BCE date - in brackets at the end of our reference (APA, 2019, p. 323), and I think we also explain where it was first published:

Veblen, T. (2010). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An economic study of institutions (revised ed., M. Banta, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1899). 

Then when we cite the republished work, we include both dates in the citation (p. 323):

(Veblen, 1899/2010).

We also need to remember who wrote the work we are reading or citing from. If we are reading the original work, then we cite the original work. But if we are drawing on the new editor's introduction, then we would cite the new editor's work like a book chapter (Royal Roads University, 2025): 

Banta, M. (Ed.). (2010). Introduction. In T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An economic study of institutions (revised ed., M. Banta, Ed., pp. x-xxvi). Oxford University Press. (Original work published Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1899). 

We also need to remember that we can't cite/reference Socrates in the original Greek if we are actually reading a translated AND republished version. We need to ensure that our reference is accurate for the publication version we used (Royal Roads University, 2025). 

This can get quite complicated!

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

Royal Roads University. (2025). Q. How should I reference classic literature in APA Style?. https://writeanswers.royalroads.ca/faq/199084

Veblen, T. (2010). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An economic study of institutions (revised ed., M. Banta, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1899).

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How to cite and reference films

Ah, the tricky work of correctly APA citing films! It was only when writing a recent post that I realised that I hadn't written an entry on how to formulate the reference for movies. These are reasonably simple, but finding the information takes a bit of time. We usually need IMDB or Wikipedia in order to find all the required components.

Further, the APA 7th edition publication manual will help (American Psychological Association, 2019). We consult the Reference Examples chapter, and find - right at the beginning of the Audiovisual Works section, the entry for film or video (American Psychological Association, 2019).

With films, the director becomes the 'author'; but if we don't know the author, we need to find someone in a similar role; someone leading the enterprise. We could use writers, producers, interviewees, presenters or executive producers (American Psychological Association, 2019). However, we also need to keep the aim to give our reader a guide back to the source in the forefront. So keeping our reference as simple as possible will aid an optimal result. 

So let's look at the components for citing the Australian film, The Castle. I turned to Wikipedia (2025) and found the following information:

• Director: Rob Sitch
• Producer: Debra Choate
• Writers: Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy, Rob Sitch
• Date: 1997
• Title: The Castle
• Production Company: Working Dog Productions

If we are going to cite the film in the theatre, my best guess for the most simple reference for the film is:

Sitch, R. (Director). (1997). The Castle [film]. Working Dog Productions.

But if I had watched the movie on DVD, then I would put "Film; DVD" in the square brackets instead. Penultimately, the citation for either version is:

(Sitch, 1997)

And lastly, a quote from the film would use an American-style time notation time notation in the brackets; i.e. 00:00:00. 

"Looks like everybody's kicked a goal" there, darl (Sitch, 1997, 18:06)!

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

Wikipedia. (2025). The Castle (1997 Australian Film). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(1997_Australian_film)

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Referencing websites

I got a great question from a student asking how to compile APA website references. Now most references need four things: authors, a publication date, a title, and a source. My approach to website references is to seek these four. However, websites sometimes get tricky, because the author may not be listed, finding a date can sometimes be very difficult, and often the title is not that clear. So my suggestions are as follows to compile a reference:

• Author. See if we can find an author; and if not, use the corporate author name (e.g. if on the Radio New Zealand website, use Radio New Zealand as the author, if there is no clear individual author)
• Date. Use the date published - if we can see it - in the same format as we would a YouTube video (e.g. 2023, May 18). If there is no date, we have a few options. Is there a date or month in the URL? Is there a date in the page footer? Was there a dated summary list that you used to access this page (blog posts are often listed in date order)? If none of those bear fruit, we could right-click on the page, bring up the pop-up menu, select 'view code' from the pop-up menu, and see if - in the page code - if there is a created-on date (it is often at the top - header - of the page coding). If we can't find anything, I tend assume that the page is current today, so use the current year. Some people think we should put "n.d."; I personally prefer to put a year - it is useful as a rough timestamp for future revisits
• Title. If there is a title at the top of the webpage, use that as the title. If there is not a title at the top of the page, sometimes the title shows in the website header bar. If so, use that as the page title. If there is nothing in the header bar either, we can use the name of the link we followed, or a plain English version of the URL
• Source. This is simply the URL of the page. Not the main website URL, but the actual page we are reading. With regard to the phrase "Retrieved on [date accessed] from" appearing before the URL, this only needs to be put on websites with 'ephemeral' links which may 'rot' in the short-term. Website storage is now less expensive, and most sites - including newspapers - leave their articles up for years, so this now tends to be less necessary, but the decision and judgement is ours. The general rule that APA apply is "What makes it easiest for the reader to find the materials".

So, taking all that info, if we wanted to cite and reference a Radio New Zealand broadcast, we could reference that as follows:

Radio New Zealand. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

Note that for simplicity we do not need the corporate author to be repeated in the Corporate Author spot. Also, as the page we have accessed is not a 'normal' web page, but is a sound file, we should also add the format that the reference is in. As mentioned, in this case, a [radio broadcast]:

Radio New Zealand. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

And, if we know who was doing the interviewing, we could use the interviewer as the author's name:

Mulligan, J. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

We would either cite this as (Radio New Zealand, 2023) or (Mulligan, 2023).

The image accompanying this post is a sample guide which I mocked up showing the simplest identifiable author website format.

I hope that is useful!

Sam

References:

Mulligan, J. (2023, May 23). Why a good-enough job should be enough for a good life [radio broadcast]. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018905245

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Avoiding opinion in academic writing

Ah: the joys of academic writing. It is quite difficult to clearly show students why it is so important that we avoid using our own opinion, or our experience, as 'evidence' when we write in academia. 

I think that the following example is helpful, however. We can approach "academic writing [like] being [in] a court of law. [Your mark]er is the judge. You [the writer] are the young prosecutor. You call witnesses (sources) to give evidence that helps build your case. You must question and dispute the stories of the witnesses and lawyers for the other side" (Mewburn et al., 2018, p. 28). I think this great explanation helps me a lot to explain the purpose of using evidence - and not opinion - to students. If we imagine a courtroom, it becomes clear why our opinion can be unhelpful, and why we need to use experts (as per the illustration accompanying this post; Newnes, 1891, p. 532). If we have watched TV courtroom dramas, it is clear how third parties are used in the process. 

In academic writing, our courtroom experts are peer-reviewed evidence from journals. This is because academic writing needs to be underpinned by reliable, objective evidence. It is not a political opinion piece: it is reliable, careful, and systematic argument (Bennett, 1991), clearly drawing on sound quality peer-reviewed articles and chapters. We cite to show the bones of our reading, and to make careful, balanced claims by using hedging language (read more on that here).

Our written work should be a synthesis of the views of experts; those with whom we agree; those with whom we do not agree and we may critique by calling "in the ‘opposition’; witnesses [we] can cross-examine who might disagree with" the argument we have are building, politely questioning their views (Mewburn et al., 2018, p. 28). We ensure that we have our systematic and careful researcher hat on (Bennett, 1991) when selecting appropriate, credible, and balanced sources to form our argument. We don't call on the discredited voices in our field; we call on those with credibility.  

Then, like a necklace of beads, our job is simply (!) to string together our argument in a cogent way, making sense of the components for those who view it... and - hopefully - those who admire it. And those whom we can persuade by our elegant argument to agree with it.

We must remember that all the citations we embed  and the references they arise from "are magic [...] little nuggets, hidden in brackets and footnotes, that confer power and protection to researchers" (Mewburn et al., 2018, p. 30). They aid us, who use those magic nuggets in our writing. They show that we have drawn on experts; they show what has shaped our thinking; they show the breadth of the field that we have covered; they show we have cast our net widely; they show that we are current in our thinking. "Names, names, names", darling (Plowman, 1992). 

Students often ask me why they can't use their own experience. It is largely because we haven't built up our own experience in a structured, objective and measured way; our learning is rarely accumulated in the organised way we that would conduct a scholarly research project. Because of that, we will see our experience through our own biases. Some biases will be unconscious - it is likely that we do not see 'all' of ourselves, as per the JoHari window (Luft, 1963; Luft & Ingham, 1955). Our 'blind area' is only evident to others, and two areas - the area we avoid, and the area of completely unknown activity - can be seen by no one; a serious limitation in trying to objectively assess patterns from memory (Luft, 1963). While we might use our own experience to shape our introduction (a "why I am interested in this" statement), our personal research expertise is simply not a strong enough foundation on which to build academic argument.

And, by drawing on real research experts, we show our growing understanding of our field.

Sam

References:

Bennett, R. (1991). Chapter 5: What is Management Research? in N. Smith, P. Dainty (Eds.), The Management Research Handbook (pp. 67-77). Routledge.

Mewburn, I., Firth, K., & Lehmann, S. (2018). How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble: A Practical Guide. Open University Press.

Luft, J. (1963). Group processes: An introduction to group dynamics. National Press.

Luft, J., & Ingham, H. (1955). The Johari Window: A Graphic Model for Interpersonal Relations. Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. University of California at Los Angeles, Extension Office.

Newnes, G. (1891). The Strand Magazine (Vol 1., p. 532). George Newnes & Co Ltd.

Plowman, J. (Producer). (1993). Fashion [TV programme]. Absolutely Fabulous, 1(1). BBC.

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Referencing YouTube videos

So, we watch a good quality YouTube video, and we want to use it in our writing. I use YouTube videos regularly, and try to be consistent in how I APA reference them, sometimes making amendments to the video titles to make them clearer (in square brackets to show that this amendment is not that of the original author). 

So a student asked if the following APA reference they had prepared was correct:

TEDxSFA. (n.d). Able Privilege, Re-Conceptualizing Disability: Alan Larson at TEDxSFA [YouTube]. TEDxTalk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX9tgr7yfwo

When I went in to look at the video, I felt that I would format the title, date and URL differently, so the video reference now looked as follows:

TEDx Talks. (2013, May 29). Able Privilege, Re-Conceptualizing Disability: Alan Larson at TEDxSFA [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/mX9tgr7yfwo

Why would I do that? Because I felt that the original didn't show the actual author, which is the channel name. This item - in my opinion - is not a "n.d." (and note the additional full stops in the no date abbreviation). There has been an upload date supplied, we just have to look a little further to find it. The URL in the original is a playlist URL. I personally prefer to get a 'clean' YouTube link using the share function which can be found is below the video. YouTube is the corporate author. So that's the why; what are the components?

Reference uses the following information, and I aim to replicate the format for each video:

• Author: Channel name exactly as it is
• Date: click the down arrow near the 9 years and the full date appears. I copy it out exactly as it appears
• Title: the title of the video exactly as it appears, then add the format in square brackets
• Corporate author: YouTube
• Source: I click the share video button underneath the player frame, and click 'copy' on the popup to get the stripped out URL

Citation:

• Author: TEDx Talks
• Date: 2013

I use the APA pattern, and I try to be consistent!

Sam

References:

APA (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). American Psychological Association

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Why we need to reference

Earlier this year I completed a MOOC on the FutureLearn platform, and got to a week which was focused on referencing. Such a great topic.

But what surprised me was that this week's work did not start with the reasons to reference - which I am quite passionate about - but rather with what can happen to us if we try to cut corners. I felt that this somewhat put the cart before the horse, so to speak.

If we follow Simon Sinek's advice, selling people the 'why' (Sinek, 2010) is a key to effective action.

I see the five main reasons for showing the bones of our thinking via citations and references as:

1. Integrity. Integrity is about using other's work as intended by the original author and citing their words, images, and IP when touched or in passing, when expanded or alluded to within our own work. If I use other's words verbatim, I quote, using double quotation marks and including a page number if it is from a numbered document, so that others can see where I "Stand on the shoulders of giants (GoogleScholar, 2023; after Newton, 1686, citing Bernard of Chartres, 1189; Wikiquote, 2023).
   
2. Honour. When we honour another's effort and ideas, we can then add our bit on top of theirs. It enables each of us to "Stand on the shoulders of giants" (GoogleScholar, 2023; after Newton, 1686, citing Bernard of Chartres, 1189; Wikiquote, 2023).
3. Honesty. The practice above shows that we are honest. We don't claim others’ work as ours, therefore any unreferenced work is our own.
4. Understanding. Referencing and citing shows that we understand our own field; we know who the experts are, and can draw upon them. It also shows our work is robust and can be relied upon, because we have our finger so on the pulse on what is new and emerging in our field. Being clear about what is coming is also an indicator that our work is robust, scholarly, and reliable.
5. Challenge. By being transparent in sharing my sources with my reader, I can be further challenged in my ideas, and so become academically stronger. I don't hide who I am reading: I share it openly, and show that I am open to challenge, discourse, and development. This enables me to 'see further' - a little further, anyway - from those giants who have gone before me.

Five darned good reasons for referencing. 

Sam

References:

GoogleScholar (2023). Home. https://scholar.google.co.nz/

Newton, I. (1686). Standing on the shoulders of giants in a Letter from Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke. http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/9285

Sinek, S. (4 May 2010). TED: How great leaders inspire action [video]. https://youtu.be/qp0HIF3SfI4

Wikiquote (2023). Isaac Newton. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

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The author's words need quote marks

Students seem to struggle with the idea of quoting and paraphrasing. I am not sure why that is: but students seem to fall between two extremes of behaviour. They either go full-noise, ultra-careful and treat all materials as if they are explosive and are all quotes (i.e. they bung a page number into every citation bracket when they don't have to); or they provide a citation, then copy the author's actual words without using quote marks, and don't supply a page number at all.

Of course, what we want them to do is to go about 80% to the full-noise end, and to only cite page numbers if they are actually quoting the author's words, and to mostly paraphrase what they are reading. 

Realistically, we don't want students to over-quote (read why here). We want them instead to write from essence, and to paraphrase most of what they read. This takes a lot of academic writing confidence, and three years in an undergrad programme is realistically not enough time to develop expertise at writing this way. But that undergrad learning will be invaluable if we later embark on a Masters or a PhD journey.

I had an interesting example the other day, where a student had just copied a list from an author's work. Because they had numbered the list differently, and there was lots of space between each quoted section, so I suspect that that they 'thought' that this didn't really constitute a quote. Sigh.

What they wrote was:

Which should have been - at the very least - formatted as:

Guideline for making ethical practise decisions (Anderson, 1996):

1. "Outline the extent of the ethical dilemma"
2. "Describe the central issues associated with the problem"
3. "Refer to professional, or agency, institutional or school, ethical guidelines, codes of practice, interagency agreements and to legislation that may have a bearing on resolution of the problem"
4. "Evaluate the rights and responsibilities of all parties involved, including those relevant to the practitioner, agency institutional or school colleagues, other professional colleagues, the agency itself and /or profession"
5. "Consider possible alternative decisions that may be taken" (p. 56).

Although it would have been better to have paraphrased this altogether.

Sam

Reference:

Anderson, R. (1996). Professionalism, ethics and the career counselling practitioner. New Zealand Journal of Counselling, 18(2), 50-58. https://nzac.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Journals/2.-Professionalism-Ethics-the-Career-Counselling-Practitioner.pdf

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Book versus chapter

When we have an edited book, what should we cite and reference? Just the chapter we are using? Or the whole book? That is a great question, and the answer is that it depends.

What does it depend on? Well, if we are using more than one chapter of an edited book, then we cite the whole book. But if we are only using the chapter, it is easier for our reader to connect with our evidence if we cite just the chapter. A couple of examples are below:

• (Crocket et al., 2011).
  Crocket, K., Agee, M., & Conforth, S. (Eds.) (2011). Ethics in Practice: A guide for counsellors. Dunsmore Press.
• (Agee et al., 2011)
  Agee, M., Crocket, K., Fatialofa, C., Frater-Mathieson, K., Kim, H., Vong, C. & Woolf, V. (2011). Chapter 1.3 Culture is Always Present: A conversation about ethics. In K. Crocket, M. Agee, S. Conforth (Eds.) Ethics in Practice: A guide for counsellors (pp. 28-32). Dunsmore Press.

But if we were wanting to cite an author whose story is particularly important to us, from a chapter citation where the author's name does not show in the citation, then we need to write a narrative around our citation. Taking the example of the references above, if we were only citing the chapter, we could tackle this as:

Within our nations, despite aims of egalitarianism, our individual cultural experience may vary significantly. Fatialofa, a member of the Pasifika community, notes that the "experience of our own culture may be different from the person sitting next to us" (Agee et al., 2011, p. 30).

Or if we were citing the book, because we were using more than one chapter, this would appear as:

Within our nations, despite aims of egalitarianism, our individual cultural experience may vary significantly. Fatialofa, a member of the Pasifika community, notes that the "experience of our own culture may be different from the person sitting next to us" (Crocket et al., 2011, p. 30).

I hope that helps!

Sam

References:

Agee, M., Crocket, K., Fatialofa, C., Frater-Mathieson, K., Kim, H., Vong, C. & Woolf, V. (2011). Chapter 1.3 Culture is Always Present: A conversation about ethics. In K. Crocket, M. Agee, S. Conforth (Eds.) Ethics in Practice: A guide for counsellors (pp. 28-32). Dunsmore Press.

Crocket, K., Agee, M., & Conforth, S. (Eds.) (2011). Ethics in Practice: A guide for counsellors. Dunsmore Press.

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How to quote

Even when writing forum posts, I encourage students to following APA standards in order to build their academic writing skills. I have written about this before (here), but it is always worth a review. I remind them that, if a paraphrase, a citation needs two components, (Author, date); and if a quote, four; "" (Author, date, p. x). 

• Paraphrase: (Author, date). This is because the paraphrase may summarise a range of things the author has said throughout the document. We take the essence of the original author's idea, and convey it in our own words. This is done 90-95% of the time in academic writing.
• Quote: "what is being cited in double speech marks" (Author, date, p. x). We point exactly to where we are using something which appears, unchanged, in the document. This pattern applies to equally to images, models, tables, graphs, and words. We use double quote marks to clearly show that we are using the expert's words, not our own. Quoting is used like seasoning: lightly, to emphasise just those key points we could not have put better ourselves.

A student had written the following in their post:

There were a few new words that I came across, the one I have chosen is an Intrapreneur. It is a person who works within and established business and encourages the business to take risks in an effort to solve a given problem or create innovative practices or services (p 16)

This post lacks (Author, date), so we know which source this material is being drawn from. It also lacks indicating that these are the exact words of the original author from the point "...is a person..." to the end of the sentence. While a quote had been implied from the page number, it needs the quote marks in order to be explicitly the words of the original author. To be honourable; to show where we are drawing on the words of an expert; and to follow APA rules, even in a relatively informal blog post; we would format the post as follows:

There were a few new words that I came across, the one I have chosen is an Intrapreneur. It "is a person who works within and established business and encourages the business to take risks in an effort to solve a given problem or create innovative practices or services" (APCDA, 2022, p. 16).

Why do we do this? Because we need to clearly flag where we have used other's words. Otherwise we are effectively stealing the original author's ideas and are passing them off as our own.

Honouring other's original ideas is the core of academic writing, to show we are standing on the shoulders of giants; not pretending - however inadvertently - to be the giant.

Sam

References:

APCDA. (2022). APCDA Glossary of Career Development Terms (version 3). Asia-Pacific Career Development Association. https://asiapacificcda.org/resources/Documents/GlossaryProject/APCDA_Glossary_Version_3.pdf

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Short quotes from websites

A student asked me how to quote from a webpage, specifically to use a short quote to define a term from a government website, specifically:

Volunteer work is defined as ‘non-compulsory, unpaid work performed for others outside a person’s own household or family business’ (New Zealand Parliamentary Service, 2018). 

To teach them how to start the citation process, I suggested that we initially turning to the APA bible, the Publication Manual (2019), to see what that says. From a quick scout in the index, the manual leads us to section 8.26, explaining that for a short quote (i.e., fewer than 40 words), we should:

"enclose [our chosen text] within double quotation marks" and "include a full citation [...] in the same sentence as the quotation" occurs (American Psychological Association, 2019, p. 271).

We compete the quote by adding a parenthetical citation at the end of our quote, to show our source, exactly as I have done above, including a page number, because it comes from a specific location in the document, and our citations should provide a map back to the source (American Psychological Association, 2019). However, online there are no page numbers. We can point someone back to the specific page, but a page might be 30,000 words long. The full stop comes at the end of the citation, which contains the page number, after the close bracket. We also need to check carefully that our quotation is EXACTLY as the author wrote it. If we make any changes, we show where we have done so by using square brackets to frame our trimmings.

We know we need to use double quotes for our Parliamentary Service quote. We can see it is a short quote, under 40 words. We have an author name, and a year. But when quoting from an online source, there are no page numbers. One page might be 30,000 words long. How do we quote then? How can we point someone back to the exact source? 

The APA manual guides us here as well, in section 8.28. For a quote from a web page, we simply add one of the following page location markers:

• A section heading: ....2018, [] section, ...
• A paragraph number: ...2018, para. [], ...
• Both

In this instance the item is a long way down the page. I would include both, thus we would end up with:

Volunteer work has been defined as "non-compulsory, unpaid work performed for others outside a person’s own household or family business" (New Zealand Parliamentary Service, 2018, H Topic of the month section, para. 1).

I think the clarifying aim has to be providing the reader with good quality information. If we are quoting from a short webpage, I would leave off the additional page location details. If it is a long page, use sections or paragraph numbers. 

Think of what works best for the reader, and for reading.

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

New Zealand Parliamentary Service. (11 October 2018). Monthly Economic Review: October 2018. https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/monthly-economic-review/monthly-economic-review-october-2018/

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What do you know about epigraphs?

In Aotearoa New Zealand, we have three official languages: English; Māori; and sign. A while ago, I was wanting to use a Whakataukī (a Māori 'proverb', but the meaning aligns more to a 'sharing of a cultural treasure') to set the tone for my PhD. 

The Whakataukī is: “Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tīnā. Ko te pae tāwhiti, whaia, kia tata" It was written/shared by Professor Sir Mason Durie - himself a national treasure - with the The Royal Society of New Zealand (Maori name Te Apārangi) for their 2015 report, Our Futures Te Pae Tāwhiti. 

I could simply APA parenthetically cite it as: 

“Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tīnā. Ko te pae tāwhiti, whaia, kia tata" (“manage today and shape tomorrow”; Durie, as cited by The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi, 2015, p. 4)

BUT. I think there are two potential errors with this approach. Firstly, I don't know how I should include the translation into English. Secondly, while the translation is on the same page (p. 4), it feels more 'correct' to have the translation within the citation bracket. So I emailed the APA Style Blog. They suggested that the translation should go in square brackets, as follows:

“Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tīnā. Ko te pae tāwhiti, whaia, kia tata” [Manage today and shape tomorrow] (Durie, as cited in The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi, 2015, p. 4)

All good. And then I had the idea of using this as an epigraph to lead my work. An epigraph is "a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme" (Merriam-Webster, 2022). Epigraphs set the tone for what is to come, "fore-shadowing" the mahi (Proofed, 2022). What I have above is not formatted as an epigraph, but I wanted to know how to do it (should I chose to do so). So I turned to the latest APA publication manual (2019), where section 8.35 looks at epigraphs.

There are several things we need to know. We need to know what the item was published within. We need to know our formatting: "The epigraph should appear before the first line of text and should be indented 0.5 in. from the left margin, like a block quotation, without quotation marks" (APA, 2019, p. 277), and we put the epigraphic source "on the line below the quotation, [and] provide the credit line [which] consist[s] of an em dash and then the author’s full name, a comma, and the title of the work in which the quotation appeared", right-aligned (p. 178). So that is - for the metric speaking world - indented by 1.3cm. See the example in the image accompanying this post.

What I found interesting is that the epigraphic source only appears in the reference list if it is an academic source, or has been touched on elsewhere in the work. And then there are the tricky issues of dates. Attributed author birth and death dates are often included, so we need to know the dates the author lived (if historic). According to the APA Style blog gurus, there "aren’t any guidelines about how to include information about the age of the person or whether they are still living, so I would just follow convention, which is to use a dash with nothing after it to indicate someone is still alive" (Chelsea Lee, personal communication, 24 April 2018). So, if our author is still living, we leave an open em dash at the end of the year.

For my Whakataukī, then, the format would be:

Original in text APA citations	Reformatted as epigraphs
“Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tīnā. Ko te pae tāwhiti, whaia, kia tata” [“manage today and shape tomorrow”] (Durie, as cited by Te Apārangi The Royal Society of New Zealand, 2015, p. 4).	Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tīnā. Ko te pae tāwhiti, whaia, kia tata [manage today and shape tomorrow]. —Sir Mason Harold Durie KNZM, Our Futures Te Pae Tāwhiti, 1938-
“we see things not as they are, we see them as we are” (quote attributed to Kant by Scharling, 1876, p. 211).	…we see things not as they are, we see them as we are. —attributed to Kant by Henrik C. Scharling, Nicolai’s Marriage (Volume 2 of 2), 1836-1920.

And remembering that our epigraphs in the right-hand column should also be indented 1.3cm from the left of our page. This was a very interesting learning experience!

Sam

References:

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). Author.

Merriam-Webster. (2022). Epigraph. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epigraph

Proofed. (2022). What Is an Epigraph? And How Do I Write One?. https://proofed.com/writing-tips/what-is-an-epigraph-and-how-do-i-write-one/

Scharling, H. (1876). Nicolai’s Marriage: A Picture of Danish Family Life (Translated from Danish, Volume 2 of 2). Richard Bentley and Son.

Te Apārangi The Royal Society of New Zealand. (2014). Our Futures Te Pae Tāwhiti: The 2013 census and New Zealand’s changing population. https://globalwomen.org.nz/assets/Uploads/resources/Our-Futures-Te-Pae-Tawhiti-Royal-Society-of-NZ-July-2014.pdf 

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Referencing twins

Have you heard of referencing twins as a thing? I had not heard the term, but once I had heard it, it made perfect sense!

A referencing twin is a second resource we are using, by the same author, published in the same year. a double- or treble-up means that we could potentially have (Smith, 2022) and (Smith, 2022) in our writing, with the reader not knowing to which Smith article we were referring. Confusion, thy name would be referencing.

However, there is an easy answer to provide a map back to the source for those who reads our work. We simply list our references in alpha-numeric order in our reference list, then add a letter to the end of the year bracket, so that when we cited our referencing twins in-text, we draw on the correct item.

We might want to draw on several course materials. So for example we would cite and reference as follows:

In-text: (Smith, 2022a)

Reference: Smith, S. (2022a).Week 1 Preparation. NMIT [Course Materials].

In-text: (Smith, 2022b)

Reference: Smith, S. (2022b). Week 2 Concepts. NMIT [Course Materials].

The next one we would list as 'Smith, 2022c' etc (and if we wanted to quote a particular slide, we use that as our page number).

And a stylier option using actual journals (APA, 2011):

Koriat, A. (2008a). Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition. Memory & Cognition, 36, 416–428. http://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.416

Koriat, A. (2008b). Subjective confidence in one’s answers: The consensuality principle. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 945–959. http://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.34.4.945

It is good to learn these techniques!

Sam

Reference: APA. (2011). Reference Twins: Or, How to Cite Articles With the Same Authors and Same Year. American Psychological Association. https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/10/reference-twins.html

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Should we cite each sentence?

TECHNICALLY, when using APA, we are supposed to cite each sentence. Practically, however, where an entire paragraph is solely based on the work of a single author, we are probably 'safe' to simply cite at the end. Doing so is less repetitive, so is easier to read. An example:

Self-report inventories can "be a form of self-talk", as while we may be reporting "what [we] believe is true about [our] situations [, what we report] are perceptions and may not be reality". We can delude ourselves via our internal narrative. Further, perception becomes our own reality, as "regardless of how real the barrier is, [our] self-talk can have a dramatic impact on how [we] view [our]selves, as well as on [our] options and how [we] make career decisions" (Osborn & Zunker, 2016, p. 133).

However, writing a paragraph from a single author source is not considered 'good' academic writing, nor is using lots of quotes. As academics we need to be careful about encouraging this, because it means that our students are are not being encouraged to create a synthesis of their own ideas evidenced by multiple authors/sources, but are being 'derivative' (McConnachie, 2022). We would be better to construct a paragraph from more sources, trimming quotes, as follows:

Self-talk has been defined as a “dialogue [through which we interpret] feelings and perceptions, regulates and changes evaluations and convictions, and [give ourselves] instructions and reinforcement” (Hackfort & Schwenkmezger, 1993, p. 355). Self-report inventories can be categorised as self-talk (Osborn & Zunker, 2016). When we undertake self-reporting tools, we may think we are reporting who we truly we are, but our perceptions are likely to be skewed through a level of either conscious or unconscious self-delusion (Osborn & Zunker, 2016), reminiscent of the JoHari Window (Luft, 1982). Self-talk as an internal, personal narrative may critique us more heavily than outside voices (Billan, 2022), which can negatively skew our self-view. Our perception IS our own reality; our self-talk impacts how we see ourselves, our choices, and our personal career decision-making processes (Osborn & Zunker, 2016).

Lastly, we also need to remember that we should not give away our power; so we should avoid leading-off a paragraph with the author name, such as "Osborn and Zunker say that self-report inventories are "a form of self talk" (2016, p. 133)"... which places the author at the centre, instead of our own ideas being the primary focus.

Sam

References:

Billan, R. (2022). Keynote Address | Allocution: Redefining Resilience [video]. CANNEXUS22 Virtual Conference 25 January - 5 February. https://cannexus22.gtr.pathable.com/meetings/virtual/prczg7FhBvbNczsYn

Hackfort, D., & Schwenkmezger, P. (1993). Chapter 14: Anxiety. In R. N. Singer, M. Murphey, & L. K. Tennant (Eds.). Handbook of Research on Sport Psychology (pp. 328–364). Macmillan Publishing Company.

Luft, J., & Ingham, H. (1961). The Johari Window: a graphic model of awareness in interpersonal relations. Human Relations Training News, 5(1), 6-7.

McConnachie, J. (26 May 2022). Using quotations effectively. https://rlfconsultants.com/using-quotations-effectively/

Osborn, D. S., & Zunker, V. G. (2016). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

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