Assignment Rules and Proper APA Formatting

• Use your own words in all your writing assignments.

• All answers to questions in your discussion boards, journal entries, outlines, and presentations must be in your own words.

• Do not copy your course textbook, or any other resource, word for word as an answer for your assignments.

• You can summarize, consolidate, paraphrase, or streamline answers from the course textbook into your assignments.

• If you must use a quote, figure, statistic, phrase, or sentence from any resource, including your course textbook, it must be placed in “quotation marks” and properly cited with an in-text citation like (Johnson, 2014) and with a properly formatted citation at the end of your writing.

• Quoted material should be not longer than one sentence.

• All citations used in this course must be formatted in APA style.

Rules to Remember

When Completing

Assignments in This Course

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All assignments musts be submitted in the proper assignment area in Blackboard. Do not email any assignments to your instructor, they cannot be graded in an email.

All final project presentations must remain within the DMACC Blackboard system.

•We are not using online presentation software like Prezi, Google Slides, or anything similar.

•Final project presentations will only be done in Microsoft PowerPoint or Blackboard Kaltura (if you want to do a video presentation).

Extra credit assignments will not be accepted after the due date.

Please use DMACC Webmail for class communications (do not use your personal email).

Additional Assignment Rules to Remember

At the end of your writing assignments include a list of resources you used for that assignment.

For this course, if you summarized or paraphrased information from the course textbook, then you do not need to list it as a resource in your discussion boards or journal entries.

However, if you use a quote or any specific word-for-word text/phrase from the course textbook, you will need to put that text in “quotations marks” and reference the course textbook as a resource you used to complete the assignment.

A proper reference is cited both at the end of a writing assignment and inside the text right after information is used. In-text citations are formatted in this manner: (Last name, year). An example of this is (Balas, 2019). Or, you could cite within the sentence like this: According to Barger (2019), the...

Referencing Your Course Book

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Has These Potential Sanctions:

A Failing Assignment GradeFailure For The Whole

CourseSuspension From College

Is Considered Cheating

Is Being Lazy

Is defined by DMACC as the appropriation of and use of another person’s writing and passing it off as the product of one’s own efforts or copying any

work and submitting it as original work.

Plagiarism:

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However, you can use these websites to help find other articles from reputable websites.

• History.com

• E-how.com

• Howthingswork.com

• Or Other Similar Websites

• Wikipedia.com

• Britannica.com

• Encyclopedia.com

• Prezi.com

We do not use the following websites, or those similar, for sources in this course.

Websites to Avoid

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If you have an author, use this format:

Last name, first name initial. (Year, Month Day). Title of

article in italics. Retrieved from http://website.url

Use

If no author is listed, use this format:

Title of article. (Year, Month Day). Retrieved from

http://website.url

Use

Use this format if the website source is not from a journal article or newspaper.

General APA Format for Website Resources

Author(s) Name(s):

Last name, followed by initial(s)., & Last name, followed by initial(s).

Middle initial is optional –include it if it’s provided (

List authors in the order provided on the site

Chavez, N., & Sanchez, R.

1

Publication Date:

In parenthesis with the year, followed by the month and day

(2018, October 14).

2

Title of Article:

Include the full title of the article, capitalizing only the first letter (and any proper nouns) and the first word after the colon :

Hurricane Michael aftermath: Thousands join efforts as many residents remain missing.

3

Title of Newspaper:

The title of the newspaper should be italicized

CNN.

4

Full URL (webpage):

Include the words “Retrieved from “ followed by the full URL of the article

Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-aftermath-wxc/index.html

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Author, A., & Author, F. M. (Year, Month day). Title of article in full: Should be included. Newspaper Title. Retrieved from

http://www.webaddress.url

Chavez, N., & Sanchez, R. (2018, October 14). Hurricane Michael aftermath: Thousands join efforts as many residents remain missing. CNN.

Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-aftermath-wxc/index.html

Basic APA Formatting of Online News Article

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5. Full URL4. Title of website/newspaper

3. Article Title

2. Publication Date

1. Author(s)

Chavez, N., & Sanchez, R. (2018, October 14). Hurricane Michael aftermath: Thousands join efforts as many residents remain

missing. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-aftermath-wxc/index.html

Example APA Formatting of Online News Article

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Miners, Z. (2009, December 9). 4 things you should know about community college. U.S. News and

World Report. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2009/12/09/4-

things-you-should-know-about-community-college

Mitchell, J. A., Thomson, M., & Coyne, R. P. (2017, January 25) APA citation. How and when to

reference. Retrieved from https://www.howandwhentoreference.com/APAcitation.

DMACC academic skills guide. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dmacc.edu/skillsguide/

Good Examples of Proper APA Formatting for Website Resources

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Source Provided Reason it won’t work

www.google.com No specific website or required information

www.YouTube.com No specific video or required information

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/24/politics/president-donald-trump-time-magazine/index.html

Does not contain the pertinent information required, such as author, publication date, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_Colombia

This is a Wikipedia article – we don’t allow Wikipedia articles.

Examples of Bad/Incomplete APA Formatting

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The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides great information on APA formatting with

examples that you can follow.

Paiz, J., Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M.,…Keck, R. (2010, May

5). General format. Retrieved from

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Additional Resource on APA Formatting