Apa Style

How to Document Sources in APA Style

I. References

References provide the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Your reference list should appear at the end of your paper. It should begin on a separate page from the text of the essay under the label References (with no quotation marks, underlining, etc.), centered at the top of the page.

Basic Rules

• Author's names are inverted. Begin with last name, followed by a comma, then by middle and first initials. Example: Smith, M. F. Use "&" instead of "and" when listing multiple authors. Example: Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R.

• Date: The publication date should be enclosed in parentheses. Example: (1998)

• Title: Italicize titles of books and periodicals. Capitalize only the first word of a title and subtitle of a work. Close with a final period. Example: Curing the crisis: Options for America's health care.

• Location: You should always list the city, but you should also include the state abbreviation if the city is not well known for publishing. You can omit state for the following cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Place a colon (:) after location. Example: Springfield, MA:

• Publisher (for books): Use the full name of the publisher, but drop Co., Inc., Publishers, etc. Retain Books or Press. Close with a period. Example: Merriam-Webster.

• Reference list must be double-spaced. All lines after the first line of each entry should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. The reference list should be alphabetized by authors' last names. If you have more than one work by the same author, order them by publication date, oldest to newest. If no author is given for a particular source, alphabetize using the title of the work.

BOOKS - General Format

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Book title. Location: Publisher.

One Author

Reagan, M. D. (1992). Curing the crisis: Options for America's health care.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Two Authors

Cohen, L. G., & Spenciner, L. J. (1994). Assessment of young children. White

Plains, NY: Longman.

Three to Six Authors

Pratkanis, A. R., Brecker, S. J., & Greenwald, A. G. (1989). Attitude structure and

function. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

• If a book has more than six authors, after giving the sixth author's name and initial, use et al. (not italicized and with a period after "al") to indicate the remaining authors of the book.

Edited Book

Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: Psychological

interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• For a book with just one editor, use (Ed.).

Book with an Author and an Editor

Welty, E. (1994). A writer's eye: Collected book reviews (P. A. McHaney, Ed.).

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Chapter from a Book

Rubenstein, J. P. (1967). The effect of television violence on small children.

In B. F. Kane (Ed.), Television and juvenile psychological development

(pp. 112-134). New York: American Psychological Society.

No Author or Editor

Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA:

Merriam-Webster.

Encyclopedia Article

Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In The new encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. 26,

pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

PERIODICALS - General Format

Author, A. A. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title