APA Style
This guide provides information on:
- Formatting a Bibliography/Works Cited Section
- Citing Sources in the Text
- Additional Resources Online
For more information and more examples, please consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed., located in the Reference Section, Call # BF76.7 .P83 2001.
General Notes:
- APA requires a hanging indent in a list of works cited. In a hanging indent, the first line of
each citation begins at the margin, and the following lines are indented by 1/2".
- Double space within and between entries.
- Alphabetize by author's last name.
- Only the first word of the article or book title is capitalized.
- All words in journal titles are capitalized.
Books
Books: Single author.
Template:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.
Example:
Watson, J. D. (1968). The double helix. New York: Atheneum.
Books: Multiple authors.
Template:
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.
Example:
Powers, S. K., & Dodd, S. L. (1996). Total fitness: Exercise, nutrition and wellness. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Books: Corporate Author.
Template:
Corporate author. (Year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.
Example:
Nursing Theories Conference Group. (1980). Nursing theories: The base for professional nursing practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Books: Article or chapter in a book.
Template:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In A. Editor, B. Editor, & C. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (page numbers). Location: Publisher.
Example:
Catalano, R., & Pickett, K. E. (2000). Taxonomy of research concerned with place and health. In G. L. Albrecht, R. Fitzpatrick & S. C. Scrimshaw (Eds.), The handbook of social studies in health and medicine (pp. 64-83). London: Sage Publications.
Articles
Article: Encyclopedia.
Template:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. In Title of encyclopedia (Vol. number, page numbers). Location: Publisher.
Example:
Webb, W. B. (1997). Sleep and dreaming. In McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of science & technology (Vol. 16, pp. 520-525). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Article: Magazine.
Template: (begin with title when there is no author)
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Date). Title of article. Name of Magazine, volume, pages.
Example:
Procrastination is bad for student's health. (2003, March 13). Jet, 92, 24.
Article: Newspaper.
Template:
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Date). Title of article. Name of Newspaper, pages.
Example:
Burton, T. M. (2000, December 12) Older treatment for manic illness may be superior. Wall Street Journal, pp. B1, B4.
Article: Journal.
Template: (drop the issue number if the journal is paginated continuously through the year)
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Name of Journal, volume number(issue number), pages.
Example:
Foster, C., Gal, R. A., Murphy, P., Port, S. C. & Schmidt, D. H. (1997). Left ventricle function during exercise testing and training. Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise, 29, 297-305.
Legal Sources
| For more information on legal citations, use: The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (17th ed., 2000). Call #REF KF245.B58 2000. |
Legal Sources: Statutes.
Template:
Name of Act, Volume Source § section number (Year).
Example:
"Service First" Initiative Act, 43 U.S.C. § 1701 (2002).
Legal Sources: Cases.
Template:
Name v. Name, Volume Source Page (Court Date).
Example:
Lessard v. Schmidt, 349 F. Supp. 1078 (E.D. Wis 1972).
Online Resources
General Websites: Not from a Database.
Template: (if no date is available, use n.d.)
Author. (Year, Month Date of last update). Title of website. Retrieved Month Date, Year, from URL
Example:
ACORN Living Wage Resource Center. (2003, March). Setting a living wage level. Retrieved December 10, 2004, from http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/index.php?id=1954
Article from a Database
Template: (use the appropriate template above and add)
Retrieved Month Date, Year, from Name of Database.
Example:
Murray, B. (2004, July 12). Minimum security. The Nation, 279, 24-26. Retrieved December 10, 2004, from Proquest Research Library.
Example:
Chan, A. & Ross, R. J. S. (2003). Racing to the bottom: International trade without a social clause. Third World Quarterly, 24, 1011-1028. Retrieved December 10, 2004, from Academic Search Premier database.
Example:
Landsburg, S.E. (2004, July 13). The Sin of wages. The New York Sun, 11. Retrieved December 10, 2004, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.
Example:
Doshi, B. T. (2000). Multiservice broadband network technology. In AccessScience. Retrieved December 20, 2001, from AccessScience@McGraw-Hill.
Online Legal Sources
Template: (use the appropriate template above and add)
Retrieved Month Date, Year, from Name of Database.
Example:
Whaling Convention Act, 16 U.S.C. § 916 (2002). Retrieved September 27, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.
Example:
18A N.J. Stat. § 11-7 (2002). Retrieved 27 September 27, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.
Example:
National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Abner Morgan, Jr.122 S. Ct. 2061. Supreme Court (2002). Retrieved September 27, 2002, from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.
- Use parenthetical citation with the author's last name and year of publication just next to the material that you are citing. Ex. (Smith, 2000).
- If you already mention the author's name in your text, simply provide the year.
- If there is no author, provide the first few words of the title and the year.
- If you are using a direct quotation, include the page number (where available).
- Online and print sources are cited the same way.
Example:
(the text below is taken from: Ercegovac, Z., & Richardson, J. V., Jr. (2004) Academic dishonesty, plagiarism included, in the digital age: A literature review. College & Research Libraries, 65, 301-18. Some of the citations have been changed for illustrative purposes.)
For example, in the chapter titled "Youth: Changing Beliefs and Behavior" in The State of Americans, (Bronfenbrenner, McClelland, Wethington, Moen, & Ceci, 1996) it is said that 58.3 percent of high school students let someone else copy their work in 1969 and 97.5 percent did so in 1989. Moreover, the percentage of students who report ever using a cheat sheet doubled from 34 to 68 percent. Surprisingly, nearly 90 percent of college students "strongly agree or somewhat agree" that it is wrong to "hand in someone else's writing as one's own," to "use the Internet to copy text to hand in as one's own," and to "purchase papers from print term-paper mills" (Scanlon & Neumann, 2002, p.379).
Kibler (1993) reviewed literature that demonstrates that various forms of academic dishonesty have been with us since ancient civilizations and that academic dishonesty, for a variety of reasons, has increased. In his Plagiarism Handbook, Harris (2001) noted that a "free-term-paper site, run by a 16-year-old, receives 13,000 hits a day" (p.184). Harris gave an example of a librarian who studied plagiarism herself and could not order a paper from a paper mill because the site was "flooded with 800 orders a day" (p.196). His book marshals lively instructional cartoons that could be used in teaching and discussing the subject of plagiarism.
The works cited section for these paragraphs would appear:
References
Bronfenbrenner, U., McClelland, P., Wethington, E., Moen, P., & Ceci S. J. (1996). The state of americans: This generation and the next. New York: The Free Press.
Harris, R. A. (2001). The plagiarism handbook: Strategies for preventing, detecting, and dealing with plagiarism. Los Angeles: Pyrczak.
Kibler, W. L. (1993). Academic dishonesty: A student development dilemma. NASPA Journal, 30 , 252-67.
Scanlon, P. M., & Neumann, D. R. (2002). Internet plagiarism among college students. Journal of College Student Development, 43, 374-85.
3. Additional Resources Online
