Here are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA). To learn more about the APA format, see http://www.apastyle.org.
Your range of works cited must 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, utilising the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) Just the initials regarding the first and names that are middle given. If the author’s name is unknown, alphabetize because of the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.
For dates, spell out the names of months within the text of the paper, but abbreviate them into the range of works cited, except for May, June, and July. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and get consistent. Aided by the style that is month-day-year make 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 because most typewriters had not a way to print italics. In the event that you write a bibliography by hand, you really need to still underline the names of publications. But, if you use some type of computer, then publication names must certanly be in italics since they are below. Check always with your instructor regarding their preference of using italics or underlining. Our examples use italics.
Hanging Indentation
All APA citations should use hanging indents, this is certainly, the first type of an entry must be left that is flush therefore the second and subsequent lines should always 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 only the first word of a title and subtitle. The exceptions to the rule could be titles that are periodical proper names in a title that ought to still be capitalized. The title that is periodical run in title case, and is accompanied by the quantity number which, aided by the title, can also be italicized.
If you have more than one author, use an ampersand (&) ahead of the name associated with the last author. If there are more than six authors, list just the first one and use et al. for the remainder.
Place the date of publication in parentheses immediately after the name associated with author. Place a period following the closing parenthesis. Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes round the titles of shorter works within longer works.
Format Examples
Allen, T. (1974). Vanishing wildlife of North America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.
Boorstin, D. (1992). The creators: a history of the heroes associated with 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 new encyclopedia britannica (Vol. 26, pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). mypaper writer (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: Do not enclose the title in quotation marks. Put a period of time following the title. Then provide the page range (in regular type) without “pp. if a periodical includes a volume number, italicize it and” 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 today’s 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, 21) july. Heard any good books lately? Time, 113, 71-72.
Trillin, C. (1993, 15) february. 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 specific website document. If a document is undated, use “n.d.” (for no date) immediately after the document title. Break a lengthy URL that goes to another line after a slash or before a period of time. Continually look at your references to online documents. There is no period following a URL. Note: If you cannot find a number of this given information, cite what is present.
Devitt, T. (2001, 2) august. Lightning injures four at music festival. The Why? Files. Retrieved 23, 2002, from http://whyfiles.org/137lightning/index.html january
Dove, R. (1998). Lady freedom among us. 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 sizable and complex website (such as for instance that for a university or a government agency), identify the host organization plus the relevant program or department before giving the URL for the document itself. Precede the URL with a colon.
