Database publishers do the best they can to provide correct citation information, and the citations that they generate can save you a lot of typing by getting most of the pieces in place. But because of the lack of standardization among electronic sources, some exported citations will contain errors.
When you export a citation, double-check it against your style guide to be sure that all details are correct. Punctuation, capitalization and overall order are common export errors, but be sure to pay attention to names, titles and dates as well (use the full text to verify, if needed).
Read on for an example. Or watch a short video here!
Below is an APA citation that Primo (the library's Everything search) generated for a journal article. The authors' names are in all caps, which is one obvious problem.
By comparing it to the journal article citation example in the APA style guide (below), you'll also see that all words in the article's title are capitalized, which is also incorrect. Only the first word in the article's title should be capitalized, and the first word after a colon.
So, knowing how capital letters should be used correctly in APA style, you would edit the version from the database to look like this:
Cox, D. T. C., Shanahan, D. F., Hudson, H. L., Plummer, K. E., Siriwardena, G. M., Fuller, R. A., Anderson, K., Hancock, S., &
Gaston, K. J. (2017). Doses of neighborhood nature: The benefits for mental health of living with nature. Bioscience, 67(2),
147–155. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biw173
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