How to: APA Citing

American Psychological Association (APA) citation format is a method of crediting sources most commonly used in disciplines related to the social sciences. If you are a student of the social sciences, it is likely that you will need to use APA citation style frequently. Proper APA citation format involves citing basic bibliographic information parenthetically within the text every time you paraphrase, summarize or quote directly from a source. In addition, full bibliographic information for sources should be included in a reference list at the end of the paper.

Instructions

  1. In-Text Citation

    • 1

      Cite the last name of the author, year of publication and page number whenever you quote, summarize or paraphrase within the text. Put these elements in order, enclose them in parentheses and separate them by commas. For instance:

      (Thomas, 1999, p. 210)

    • 2

      Position your citation so that it directly follows the quoted or summarized passage. If you are quoting, make sure that the citation falls outside of the quotation marks with the period going after the citation. For example:

      A contemporary observer noted that "great losses in viewership does not necessarily in and of itself constitute jumping the shark" (Thomas, 1999, p. 210).

    • 3

      Cite only the year of publication and page number if you have already mentioned the author by name within the text. In such cases, cite the year of publication directly after the author's name, and cite the page number directly after summarizing or quoting. For example:

      Critic Ron Thomas (1999) noted that "great losses in viewership does not necessarily in and of itself constitute jumping the shark" (p. 210).

    Listing References

    • 4

      Cite books according to the following general template:

      Author. (Year). Title. City of Publication: Publisher.

    • 5

      Cite newspaper articles according to the following general template:

      Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of Article. Name of Newspaper, Page Number.

      When citing a newspaper, precede the page number with the letter "p" and a period. For example: p. A1.

      If the article appears on more than one page, precede the page numbers with two ps and a period, and separate the page numbers with a comma. For example: pp. A1, B2.

    • 6

      Cite journal articles according to the following general template:

      Author. (Year). Title of Article. Name of Journal, Volume Number(issue number), Pages.

    • 7

      Cite a website in the following format:

      Author. (Year). Title of Page. Retrieved from http://www.whatever.com/full/URL

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