APA Format–6^th Edition

OVERVIEW–The American Psychological Association (APA) style is widely accepted in the social sciences and other fields, such as education, business, and nursing. The APA citation format requires parenthetical citations within the text rather than endnotes or footnotes. Citations in the text provide brief information, usually the name of the author and the date of publication, to lead the reader to the source of information in the reference list at the end of the paper.   

NOTE:   APA style requires double spacing throughout (e.g. text, references, etc.)

APA RULES FOR THE REFERENCES PAGE – The following sections show some of the more commonly used APA citation rules.

NOTE: All citations must be in the Hanging Indent Format with the first line flush to the left margin and all other lines indented. 

JOURNALS, MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS IN PRINT FORMAT  

General Form

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, xx, xxx-xxx.

NOTE:  The journal title and the volume number are in italics. Issue numbers are not required if the journal is continuously paged. If paged individually, the issue number is required and is in regular type in parentheses adjacent to the volume number.

One Author

Williams, J. H. (2008). Employee engagement: Improving participation in safety. Professional Safety, 53(12),

40-45.

Two to Seven Authors [List all authors]

Keller, T. E., Cusick, G. R., & Courtney, M. E. (2007). Approaching the transition to adulthood: Distinctive

profiles of adolescents aging out of the child welfare system. Social Services Review, 81, 453-484.

Eight or More Authors [List the first six authors, … and the last author]

Wolchik, S. A., West, S. G., Sandler, I. N., Tein, J.-Y., Coatsworth, D., Lengua, L.,...Griffin, W. A. (2000). An

experimental evaluation of theory-based mother and mother-child programs for children of divorce.

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68, 843-856.

Magazine Article

Mathews, J., Berrett, D., & Brillman, D. (2005, May 16). Other winning equations. Newsweek, 145(20), 58-59.

Newspaper Article with No Author and Discontinuous Pages

Generic Prozac debuts. (2001, August 3). The Washington Post, pp. E1, E4.

BOOKS, CHAPTERS IN BOOKS, REPORTS, ETC.

General Form

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.

One Author

Alexie, S. (1992). The business of fancydancing: Stories and poems. Brooklyn, NY: Hang Loose Press.

Corporate Author with an Edition and Published by the Corporate Author

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.).

Washington, DC: Author.

Anonymous Author

Dorland’s illustrated medical dictionary (31^st ed.). (2007). Philadelphia, PA: Saunders.

Chapter in a Book

Booth-LaForce, C., & Kerns, K. A. (2009). Child-parent attachment relationships, peer relationships, and peer-

group functioning. In K. H. Rubin, W. M. Bukowski, & B. Laursen (Eds.), Handbook of peer interactions,

relationships, and groups (pp. 490-507). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

ERIC Document

Shyyan, V., Thurlow, M., & Liu, K. (2005). Student perceptions of instructional strategies: Voices of English

language learners with disabilities. Minneapolis, MN: National Center on Educational Outcomes, University

of Minnesota. Retrieved from the ERIC database.(ED495903)

 

 

ONLINE JOURNALS, MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS

General Format - Databases

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Name of Journal, xx, xxx-xxx.

doi:xxxxxxxxxx

Article Retrieved from an Online Database

NOTE: Use the article’s DOI (Digital Object Identifier), the unique code given by the publisher to a specific article.

Senior, B., & Swailes, S. (2007). Inside management teams: Developing a teamwork survey instrument. British

Journal of Management, 18, 138-153. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00507.x

NOTE: Use the journal’s home page URL (or web address) if there is no DOI.  This may require a web search to locate the journal’s home page. There is no period at the end of web address.  Break a long URL before the punctuation.

Koo, D. J., Chitwoode, D. D., & Sanchez, J. (2008). Violent victimization and the routine activities/lifestyle of

active drug users. Journal of Drug Issues, 38, 1105-1137. Retrieved from http://www2

.criminology.fsu.edu/~jdi/

Article from an Online Magazine

Lodewijkx, H. F. M. (2001, May 23). Individual-group continuity in cooperation and competition under varying

communication conditions. Current Issues in Social Psychology, 6(12), 166-182. Retrieved from

http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.6.12.htm

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES

General Form

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Retrieved from web address

Online Report from a Nongovernmental Organization

Kenney, G. M., Cook, A., & Pelletier, J. (2009). Prospects for reducing uninsured rates among children: How

much can premium assistance programs help? Retrieved from Urban Institute website: http://

www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411823

Online Report  with No Author Identified and No Date

GVU's 10th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www .cc.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1998-

10/

 

 

Web Sites in Parenthetical Citations: To cite an entire Web site (but not a specific document within the site), it is sufficient to give the URL of the site in the text. No entry in the reference list is needed.  Example:

Kidpsych is an excellent website for young children (http://   www.kidpsych.org).

REFERENCE CITATIONS IN TEXT– APA utilizes a system of brief referencing in the text of a paper, whether one is paraphrasing or providing a direct quotation from another author’s work.  Citations in the text usually consist of the name of the author(s) and the year of publication.  The page number is added when utilizing a direct quotation.

Indirect  Quotation with Parenthetical Citation

Libraries historically highly value intellectual freedom and patron confidentiality (LaRue, 2007).

 

Indirect Quotation with Author as Part of the Narrative

LaRue (2007) identified intellectual freedom and patron confidentiality as two key values held historically by libraries.

 

Direct Quotation with Parenthetical Citation 

Darwin used the metaphor of the tree of life "to express the other form of interconnectedness–genealogical rather than ecological" (Gould & Brown, 1991, p. 14).

 

Direct Quotation with Author as Part of the Narrative

Gould and Brown (1991) explained that Darwin used the metaphor of the tree of life "to express the other form of interconnectedness–genealogical rather than ecological”(p. 14).

CITING SECONDARY SOURCES -- When citing in the text a work discussed in a secondary source, give both the primary and the secondary sources. In the example below, the study by Seidenberg and McClelland was mentioned in an article by Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller.

Seidenberg and McClelland’s study (as cited in Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993) provided a glimpse into the world

In the references page, you would cite the secondary source you read not the original study.

Coltheart, M., Curtis, B., Atkins, P., & Haller, M. (1993). Models of reading aloud:  Dual-route and

parallel-distributed-processing approaches. Psychological Review, 100, 589-608.

 

Please visit the Cross Ref page to find the DOI for your article.

https://www.crossref.org/

The links below will take you the Owl, Purdue's Online Writing Lab, and to the Cornell University Library's page.  Both of these have clear and detailed explanations of what is found in an annotation along with sample annotations.