References

APA has a fairly exhaustive set of rules governing the information and formatting of references in the reference list. The following explanations are not in any way complete and are merely meant to provide a general framework. You are encouraged to refer to APA's guide for sources not covered here.

The reference list should be formatted the same as the rest of the paper (See the Formatting tab for those specifications). Do not change font, font size, margins or spacing.

The basic format for a book is:

Surname, A. B., (2018). Title of book: Subtitle here if given in source. City, ST: Publisher.

The basic format for a journal article is:

Surname, A. B., & Surname, C. D. (2018). Title of article in sentence case. Title of Journal Exactly as Given, 2(1), 32-40.

In order to give a proper reference, you need to be clear on what kind of source you're looking at. Because we access so much content online, it's tempting to think of everything as a website. In APA, a book chapter is represented one way, while a journal article is represented in another, so take a moment to determine exactly what kind of publication you have. If an article was published in a journal, it will have been published in a specific volume and issue of that journal. Even if you accessed the article online, you must give the volume and issue number in your reference: a URL or DOI does not take the place of the information for the publication itself.

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Additionally, observe the following rules:

References Heading:

The references list should be labeled "References" in 12 point, Times New Roman type, centered and NOT underlined, bold or in all caps. The references list should not be labeled "Works Cited," "Sources," "Cited Sources" or anything other than "References."

 

Hanging Indents

Use hanging indents. This means that the first line of a paragraph (in this case, a reference) is aligned with the left margin and subsequent lines are indented:

Kennedy, D. M., & McComb, S. A. (2009). Merging internal and external processes: Examining the mental model convergence process through team communication. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 11(4), 340-358.

Word will do this for you. See this demonstration of hanging indents in Word

 

Names

Last name first, followed by a comma, then the initials of the author's name. If there are two or more initials, there should be a period and a space between the initials. Add a comma and follow the same procedure for each additional author. Before the final author, there should be an ampersand. All authors should be listed, unless there are more than seven. The final author should be followed by a period.

For sources with multiple authors, you must list up to the first seven authors. If there are eight or more authors, give the first seven, followed by "et al."

 

Publication date

For books and journal articles, this will just be the year. For newspapers and magazines that do not have volume and issue numbers, the whole date given on the source is used. The proper format for that is (year, month day).

Christmas, J. (2001, December 12). A measured net approach. National Post, p. SR2.

 

Capitalization

For titles of journals, keep the capitalization exactly as it appears on the publication itself.

For titles of journal articles, books and book chapters, capitalize only:

• The first word of a journal article
• The first word of the subtitle
• Proper nouns

Everything else should be lower case.

 

!	Citation generators will often leave the title's capitalization exactly as you put it in. In other words, many citation generators will not uncapitalize anything, even when they should do so. Be sure to double check that the title of the book or journal article is in sentence case.

Journal Titles

Give the journal title exactly as the publisher does. Do not shorten or abbreviate anything unless that is how it appears on the publication itself.

Be aware that some sources (and disciplines) abbreviate the titles of journals in their databases and references, so if you see something listed as "Soc Psychol Q," you might need to do a little looking to get the full title of the journal: Social Psychology Quarterly.

 

Italics

Italicize:

• Book titles
• Journal titles
• Volume numbers

Do not italicize:

• Article titles
• Issue numbers

 

"And" and "&"

In the references list, use an ampersand (&) before the last author's name. For everything else, use whichever form appears in the work itself.

 

Order

Put the list in alphabetical order by author's last name and date. Go by the order of the letters, ignoring apostrophes and hyphens. Order names with "prefixes" and internal capitals by the first letter of what constitues the whole last name: McDougal goes with the "M's" and St. James goes with the "S's."

Macally, Mack, Madden, McArthur, Meeks, ...

Saint-Beuve, Schwab, Selleck, Skillen, St. Helena, Stricker, ...

If there is more than one source for the same author from the same year, alphabetize them by title and add letters after the year: 2005a, 2005b, and so on.

Basic format for a journal article:

Basic format for book: