Citing Styles for Sociology

Many academic disciplines have their own system for citing sources in the text of scholarly papers and for lists of works cited at the end. The American Sociological Association has developed the ASA style, with its own particular requirements for formatting information, such as a source's author, title and work of publication.
  1. In-Text Citations

    • ASA style requires that writers include parenthetical notes after sentences showing information taken from outside sources. If you use the author's name in the sentence, you only have to put the year of publication and the page number where the information was found. If it is not in the sentence, the author's last name(s) go in the note as well. If there are more than three authors, you write only the first author's name followed by et al.

      Simpson argues that this trend is only temporary (2007:23).

      This trend is only temporary (Simpson 2007:23).

      That tactic does not motivate all socioeconomic groups equally (Presley et.al. 2001:25).

      If you have more than one source for the same sentence, separate them with a semicolon.

    Works Cited List: Formatting

    • The first line of each entry should begin at the margin. If your information goes onto more than one line, indent one tab at the beginning of each subsequent line. Order your list alphabetically, based on the first word in each entry.

    Works Cited List: Order of Information

    • The title of the book should appear in italics. The information for each entry should appear in this order: author's name, year of publication, title, publication information, and then date and URL of online access, if the book chapter was sourced from the Internet.

      Smith, Robert. 2006. "The Woodrow Wilson Years." Pp. 423-444 in Presidents of the United States, edited by Jerry Isbinsen. Dallas, TX: Presidential Press.

    Works Cited List: Internet Sources

    • After you've put all of the relevant publication information about a source that you found online, you then need to put the date you accessed the source online and the URL where the source appears. The title of the magazine, Brothers Who Argue, should appear in italics. Here is an example of an online magazine article:

      Wright, Orville. 1903. "Why I'm Smarter than Wilbur." Brothers Who Argue, June 25. Retrieved May 27, 2011 (http://brotherswhoargue.com/wright/feature/1903/06/25.html).

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