APA Style
The APA style of writing was developed by the American
Psychological Association to provide writers with standard writing guidelines.
A complete APA stylebook, like the 5th edition Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (2001),
provides a comprehensive guide to writing according to APA style.
This handout offers help for APA documentation.
Documentation provides information about the outside sources that writers have
consulted for their papers. The sources may be books, magazines, interviews,
the World Wide Web, etc. The main purpose of documentation is not only to
credit the original author(s), but also to help readers locate and judge the
original source(s) of information. To avoid plagiarism it is very important to
correctly document, using the exact punctuation within each specific source.
Two different types of documentation are required when writing from outside
sources; citing sources within the paper (in-text citation), and citing sources
in a separate “References” page at the end of the paper. Below you will find
brief explanations of each type of documentation and citation examples for the
most commonly used print sources.
In-Text Citations
An
in-text (within the paper) citation identifies where another’s words, facts or
ideas are being used. In-text citations include only what is necessary to
identify a source in the reference list and are put within parentheses.
They always include:
·
The author’s last name
·
The date of publication
They sometimes include:
·
The parts of a source.
Page and chapter are abbreviated
in such text citations as p., and chap.
NOTE: Titles of books and periodicals are italicized when
referred to in-text or in references.
Entire
Work
If you wish to refer to an
entire work it is best to include it within your text. Begin with the name of
the author as it appears in the references page; you may or may not choose to
include the Title of the work.
Examples:
or
The following are examples
of the most commonly used in-text citations for print sources:
Include the author’s last
name and the year the source was published after the paraphrase or summary. If
you use the author’s name in the sentence containing the summarized or
paraphrased material you do not need to repeat it in your parenthetical
acknowledgement.
Examples:
The young protagonist was
often times very mature, beyond her six and a half years (Olsen, 1983).
Tillie Olsen describes her young protagonist as often times very mature, beyond
her six and a half years (1983).
NOTE: Sentence punctuation (the period)
follows the parenthetical citation.
For a short quotation (fewer
than 40 words) in the text include the author, year, and page number in
parenthesis.
Example:
The author once wrote that
“the birth of a child is an event of utmost importance . . .” (Sanger, 1971, p.
143).
In
a block quotation (any quotation consisting of 40 or more words) include the
author’s name and the date of publication in the sentence introducing the
quote. Place the page number in
parenthesis after the final punctuation of the block quotation. Indent all lines seven spaces from the left
margin. Double space the block of quoted
material. If you quote more than one
paragraph, indent the first line an additional
Example:
Bryson (1990) reports that
the “rule” that a sentence should not end in a preposition is based on the
opinion of a clergyman:
The source of this stricture, and several other equally
dubious ones, was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur
grammarian whose A short induction to
English grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly
influential life both in his native
NOTE: There are no quotation marks with block quotations.
Although a comma or period usually comes after the parenthetical citation, you
must put it before the citation when using a block quotation.
NOTE: If you use the title of a book in the text of your
paper, write it in italics.
If you use a quotation or
paraphrased material within a sentence, acknowledge your source immediately
after your reference to the borrowed material.
Example:
The main idea is a broad
topic or general rule (Kesselman-Turkel & Peterson, 1982) which if used as
a thesis statement, “must be broad enough to include every topic sentence in
the body” (Fawcett & Sandberg, 1996, p. 244), yet to be specific enough to
be clear.
If your source has one or
two authors, cite both names every time.
If the source has more than two authors, cite all authors the first time
the reference occurs. In later citations of that source, use only the first
author’s name followed by “et al.” In the parenthetical acknowledgement, use
the “&” sign instead of the word “and.”
Examples:
Wasserstein, Zappulla,
Rosen, Gestman, and Rock (1994) found . . .
[Use as first citation in
text.]
Wasserstein et al.(1994)
found . . .
[Use as subsequent first
citation per paragraph thereafter.]
Wasserstein et al. found .
. .
[Omit year from subsequent
citations after first citation within a paragraph.]
If you need to cite more
than one source for specific information (perhaps to show that your theory is
widely accepted) you should list the authors alphabetically in your
parenthetical reference. Separate each work with a semicolon (;). If more than
one work appears by the same author, list the author’s name followed by the
publication dates.
Example:
Research into reading has
tentatively concluded that students who perceive themselves as poor readers
tend to perform accordingly (Paris, Olson & Stevenson, 1983; Wigfield &
Asheer, 1984; Wixen, Peters, Weber & Roeber, 1987).
You may need to use a
source that another author has used in a document, but the original source is
not available to you. In this case, you must acknowledge where you found the
information (the secondary source). Cite the secondary source in the reference
list. In the text, write the original source and in parenthesis write (cited
in, followed by the author of the secondary source, and the date).
Example:
Pearson, Hansen and
Gordon’s study of young readers (cited in Stevens, 1982) determined that
background knowledge can be taught directly.
References
The References is a list of works cited within your paper and is on
a separate page that is located at the end of a paper. Here are some things to
remember about a references section:
·
The list should be on a separate page entitled References (consult
the APA publication manual for the
correct format for a reference page).
·
Entries should have a hanging indent.
·
The list of references should be double spaced.
·
Authors are listed alphabetically according to last name.
·
Only the first word and any proper nouns and adjectives in
the title of the work are capitalized. Within the title, words after a colon
are also capitalized.
·
In the case of no author, titles are listed among the
alphabetical author list and entered into the list alphabetically according to
the first significant word in the title.
·
If there is more than one work by the same author, the entries
are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first.
NOTE: See an example of a Reference page (including print
and electronic citations) at the end of this handout.
NOTE: With certain major cities it is not required to list
the state that they are in. For a
complete list see the APA manual.
Sanger, M.
(May, 1929). Women and birth control. The
North American, 227, 529 - 534.