# >> College & Higher Education >> College

How to Cite a Movie Dialogue in APA

If you are writing your term paper in accordance with formatting rules laid out in the Style Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), you know that you must include the author's last name, year of publication and page number when you cite material in the text. This can be problematic when you need to cite movie dialogue, because films do not have authors or page numbers. Luckily, APA style lays out simple guidelines for the citation of movie quotes.

Instructions

- 1
  List the name of the film in italics, followed by a comma. For example:
  
  American Psycho,
- 2
  List the year the film was released.
- 3
  Place your citation within parentheses. For example:
  
  (American Psycho, 1999)
- 4
  Position your parenthetical citation directly after the movie dialogue you are quoting. For example:
  
  Patrick Bateman tells his lawyer, "Tonight I just had to kill...a lot of people" (American Psycho, 1999), but he is never apprehended by police.
- 5
  Insert the word trailer into your citation if you are quoting dialogue from a movie trailer. The title of the film should remain italicized, but the word "trailer" should not appear in italics. For example:
  
  Patrick Bateman tells his lawyer, "Tonight I just had to kill...a lot of people" (American Psycho trailer, 1999), but he is never apprehended by police.

How to Bring a Sorority to Your School

How to Evaluate the Usefulness of a Theory