Jeff Zuckerman

The most frequent questions I receive in my virtual mailbag relate to citing electronic sources. I urge students to check the resources in The APA Style Asylum in the Walden Writing Center, where you’ll find many examples. APA’s own Web site (http://www.apastyle.org/) also has some good examples.

My general rule is to use APA’s method for citing print sources as a starting point and then go from there—which sometimes means just adding the date of retrieval and the URL. Notice what gets capitalized, what gets italicized, and so on.

Here are three of the most common kinds of requests I receive. Mind you, these are just examples.

1. A government Web site, such as this fact sheet from the National Institute of Mental Health.  In this example, no author is listed, so I put the NIMH in the author slot.
   
   Start with the examples on pages 256–257 in the APA manual.
   
   National Institute of Mental Health. (1999). Facts about social phobia (NIH Publication No. OM-99 4171, Revised). Retrieved August 22, 2005, from www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/phobiafacts.cfm.
   
   
2. An article that you found from the journal British Social Worker via the EBSCOHost database.
   
   Hanratty, T., & Bradshaw, T. (2003). Effects of injuries on marital relationships of former athletes. British Social Worker, 29, 325–356. Retrieved August 15, 2005, from the EBSCOHost database.
   
   
3. Some article on the Web with no author and no date, like this “Careers in Marketing” site.
   
   Trick question: First decide if it has any scholarly merit. Sometimes I see students looking up convenient sites like www.careers-in-marketing.com/np.htm, where they stumble over a “fact” like “20% of the jobs in the United States are in nonprofits.” Personally, I’d question a statistic like that: Where did this .com come up with that number? How trustworthy is it? What can you really learn about your source from a commercial Web site like this one?

What about citing page numbers when there are none in your document? Ideally, you’re supposed to indicate the paragraph number of a particular section. So if you want to cite a statement from a Web site from the American Cancer Society that critiques an earlier journal article on shark cartilage, you’ll come up with something like this:

Despite claims to its efficacy, shark cartilage may not live up to the billing (American Cancer Society, 2005, Why it’s important section, ¶1).

And for the record, here is how you’d cite it in the reference list:

American Cancer Society. (2005). Shark cartilage fails test against advanced cancer: Unproven claims still found on the Internet. Retrieved August 16, 2005, from http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_
Shark_Cartilage_Fails_Test_Against_Advanced_Cancer.asp

One important confession: Even though I mess around with this stuff all day long, sometimes I plain don’t know the “right” answer. My goal, though, is to follow the manual as best I can. Remember that your goal is to help your reader know where he or she can find what you read.

And as always, if you have questions, feel free to contact me at jzuckerm@waldenu.edu.