Type in a single line the following information, in this order: author's name, title of book or article, title of publication or publishing house, publication date and page number where you found the information.
Start on the left and type in a single line. If your entry is too long for one line, go to a second line and indent.
Enter author's name with last name first, followed by first name, middle name and any titles, such as Dr.,Jr, Sr, I, II.
Type a book title in italics. Surround article titles with quotation marks.
Capitalize words in the title of an article or book, except for conjunctions such as and, but, because; or prepositions such as in, of, for. Conjunctions and prepositions used at the beginning of a title should be capitalized.
Type the name of the publisher, not the printer for books. Shorten the name of the publisher. For example, Macmillian Publishing Company would be shorted to Macmillian in your bibliography.
Use italics for the name of a magazine, journal, periodical, newspaper, or encyclopedia being cited as the source of an article in your research paper.
List the most recent year of publication for books. Include a month, season or actual date of publication for articles in periodicals that publish several times a year.
Cite the author's name and date of publication in the text if using APA (American Psychological Association) style. Many scientific articles use APA style in text citations and a list of references.
Type the last name of the author and publication date in parenthesis in the text where the information is shared.
Expand bibliographic information in your reference list. The reference list resembles MLA style with author's name first, but followed by date of publication in parentheses. An example of APA style reference listing would be: Author's last name, A.A. (year, month date), Title of article, Title of publisher.
Include a paragraph of approximately 150 words about the content of a source, including one or two sentences that evaluate the authority and background of the author, and comments about how the article speaks to the intended audience. Compare this article to others used in your research and comment on how this piece of work supports your position.
Write annotations as indented paragraphs after bibliographical information. They can be used with both MLA and APA styles.
An example of an annotated text, from Cornell University:
"The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living."