Collaborative writing III

Analysis of in-text citations and references in an academic article

The APA publication manual (2010) states that in order to avoid plagiarism, sources should be properly cited and credited. In in-text citations, writers may resort to the author's exact words or to a paraphrasis. In the first case, APA indicates that, as long as there are fewer than forty words in the quotation, not only should double quotation marks be used, but also the page number of the citation should be included, together with the author and year of publication. On the other hand, quotation marks and page number are not obligatory if the material is paraphrased, but they could be useful in case "an interest reader [wants] to locate the relevant passage in a long or complex text" (APA, 2010, p. 171). In addition to this, the manual specifies that every cited source ought to appear in a reference list, which must be written at the end of the paper on a separate page. The aim of the present paper is to analyse in-text citations and the reference page of the article Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & López-Torres, 2003).

As mentioned above, in connection to in-text citations, when the writer cites the author’s exact phrases in fewer than forty words, they must be enclosed with double quotation marks, followed by the author's surname, year of publication and page number. This information should be separated by commas, and the page number must be preceded by a lower-case p and a period. In the article discussed, the author complies with these guidelines in most cases. However, the comma has been omitted in two instances, namely “[...] And as praxis it requires theory to illuminate it” (Freire 1972, p. 96)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 249) and “[...] and not of anything independent of human consciousness” (Houghton Mifflin Company (2000)” (p. 253), in which there is also an extra bracket and the page number is not introduced by the initial p. In the case of direct quotations which comprise forty or more words, they should be displayed in a freestanding block of text without quotation marks. In the article, such block quotations are not present, though on closer inspection, the writer ought to have formatted the passage beginning "an aspect [...] in the present" (p. 253), which has more than forty words, into a block quotation.

When paraphrasing ideas, the author as well as the year of publication must be provided, according to APA (2010) standards. If the author’s name is part of the formal sentence structure, only the year ought to be in parenthesis. Nonetheless, the year should be excluded “from subsequent citations after first nonparenthetical citation within a paragraph” (p. 175). Additionally, quotations marks ought not to be used, and the page number need not be added, unless the writer deems it useful for the reader. The writer of the discussed article meets the aforementioned conventions, save in the following instances “Morrison argued that teachers [...]” and “Tickle found that [...]” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 249) in which the year of publication has not been included even though these authors are mentioned for the first time in the paragraph. 

With regard to the reference list, as mentioned in the introduction, APA (2010) requires that it be on a separate page at the end of the paper and that every source cited be listed alphabetically. This is not the case in the article in question, as the reference list follows the notes section on its same page. What is more, there are two sources which have been cited in the development of the paper but not included in the references, namely Houghton Mifflin Company (2000) and Engenstron (1993). Considering format, the reference list should be both double-spaced and with a hanging indentation to the left. The article only complies with the latter. The reference list, thus, fails to satisfy all the necessary standards as stated by APA.

Having carried out an analysis of in-text citations, it can be concluded that the article explored fulfils some of the guidelines set by APA (2010) only in overall terms. Whilst most of the in-text citations reach the required standards, some discrepancies have been found in relation to punctuation. Additionally, it is important to highlight the omission of not only information in the citations but also of sources in the reference list. Likewise, although some formal conventions related to formatting have not been taken into consideration when writing the references, the article generally satisfies the established conventions dictated by the APA publication manual (2010).

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J. & López-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis. Theory Into Practice, 42(3), 248-254. doi: 10.1353/tip.2003.0030