Below are standard formats and examples for basic information that is bibliographic by the American Psychological Association (APA). For more information on the APA format, see http://www.apastyle.org.
Your variety of works cited has to start at the end of the paper on a page that is new the centered title, References. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author’s last name, with the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) Just the initials for the first and names that are middle given. In the event that author’s name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.
For dates, spell out of the names of months within the text of the paper, but abbreviate them within the range of works cited, with the exception of May, June, and July. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. With all the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma following the year unless another punctuation mark goes there.
Underlining or Italics?
When reports were written on typewriters, the names of publications were underlined since most typewriters had not a way to print italics. In the event that you write a bibliography by hand, you should still underline the names of publications. But, then publication names should be in italics as they are below if you use a computer. Check always with your instructor regarding their preference of employing italics or underlining. Our examples use italics.
Hanging Indentation
All APA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first type of an entry should really be flush left, together with second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2″.
Capitalization, Abbreviation, and Punctuation
The APA guidelines specify using sentence-style capitalization for the titles of books or articles, so you should capitalize just the first word of a title and subtitle. The exceptions for this rule could be periodical titles and proper names in a title that ought to still be capitalized. The title that is periodical run in title case, and it is followed by the amount number which, because of the title, is also italicized.
When there is one or more author, use an ampersand (&) prior to the name associated with last author. If there are more than six authors, list only the first one and use et al. for the remainder.
Place the date of publication in parentheses soon after the true name of this author. Place a period of time after the closing parenthesis. Usually do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works within longer works.
Format Examples
Allen, T. (1974). Vanishing wildlife of The United States. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.
Boorstin, D. (1992). The creators: a reputation for the heroes of the imagination. New York: Random House.
Nicol, A. M., & Pexman, P. M. (1999). Presenting your findings: A practical guide for creating tables. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Searles, B., & Last, M. (1979). A reader’s guide to science fiction. New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Toomer, J. (1988). Cane. Ed. Darwin T. Turner. New York: Norton.
Encyclopedia & Dictionary
Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In the newest encyclopedia britannica (Vol. 26, pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Pettingill, O. S., Jr. (1980). Falcon and Falconry. World book encyclopedia. (pp. 150-155). Chicago: World Book.
Tobias, R. (1991). Thurber, James. Encyclopedia americana. (p. 600). New York: Scholastic Library Publishing.
Magazine & Newspaper Articles
Format: Author’s last name, first initial. (Publication date). Article title. Periodical title, volume number(issue number if available), inclusive pages.
Note: usually do not enclose the title in quotation marks. Put a period following the title. If a periodical includes a volume number, italicize it and then supply the page range (in regular type) without “pp.” If the periodical will not use volume numbers, as with newspapers, use p. or pp. for page numbers. Note: Unlike other periodicals, p. or pp. precedes page numbers for a newspaper reference in APA style.
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.
Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in the current schools. Time, 135, 28-31.
Kalette, D. (1986, 21) july. California town counts town to big quake. USA Today, 9, p. A1.
Kanfer, S. (1986, July 21). Heard any books that are good? Time, 113, 71-72.
Trillin, C. (1993, February 15). Culture shopping. New Yorker, pp. 48-51.
Website or Webpage
Online document: Author’s name. (Date of publication). Title of work. Retrieved day, year, from full URL month
Note: When citing Internet sources, relate to the precise document that is website. If a document is undated, use “n.d.” (for no date) right after the document title. Break a URL that is lengthy goes to another line after a slash or before an interval. Continually look at your references to online documents. There is no period following a URL. Note: if you fail to find several of this information, cite what is available.
Devitt, T. (2001, 2) august. Lightning injures four at music festival. The Why? Files. Retrieved 23 writemypaper, 2002, from http://whyfiles.org/137lightning/index.html january
Dove, R. (1998). Lady freedom in our midst. The Electronic Text Center. Retrieved 19, 1998, from Alderman Library, University of Virginia website: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/afam.html june
Note: If a document is contained within a large and complex website (such as for instance that for a university or a government agency), identify the host organization additionally the relevant program or department before giving the URL for the document itself. Precede the URL with a colon.
