Research Guides
APA (American Psychological Association) Style is widely used in the social sciences, business, and some of the life sciences. APA Style uses brief in-text citations in the text that refer to an alphabetical list of references appearing at the end of the work.
This guide gives example citations for the most common information formats used in APA Style, as well as links to other sources and examples Many of te examples in this guide came from Purdue OWL Guide to APA.
APA follows the author-date method of in-text citations. When directly quoting or paraphrasing the works of others, the author's last name, year of publication and page number (if applicable) should appear in the text, with a fill citation appearing in the References list at the end of the paper. If you are not making a direct quote, you only need to make reference to the author and year of publication in the text.
Some examples from the Purdue OWL Guide:
According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199).
Jones (1998) found "students often had difficulty using APA style" (p. 199); what implications does this have for teachers?
According to Jones (1998), APA style if a difficult citation format for first-time learners.
APA style us a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998, p. 199).
*If the quote that you are using is longer than 40 words, put it in a free-standing block, indented, and omit quotation mark.
General Format
Author, A. A. (Year of Publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.
Edited Book
Plath S. (2000). The unabridged journals. K.V. Kukil (Ed.). New York, Ny: Anchor.
Article or Chapter in Edited Book
Author, A. A. (Year of of Publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.
General Format
Author, A.A., Author B.B., Author, C.C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume (issue), pages.
Carney, M. (2012). Compounding crises of economic recession and food insecurity: a comparative study of three low-income communities in Santa Barbara county." Agriculture and Human Values, 29(2), 185-201.
Online Newspaper Article
Newton, C. (2010, Feb. 15). Driving-while-texting ban advances Senate. The Arizona Republic. Retrieved from http://www.azcentral.com
Newspaper from Print Source
Pearson, S.L. (1997, June 5). Why Johnny can't play. The Arizona Republic, p. HL1.
Online Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Feminism. (n.d.). In Encyclopedia Britannica online. Retrieved from http://www.britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/724633/feminism
Data Sets
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2008). Indiana income limits [Data file]. Retreived from http://www.hususer.org/Datasets/IL/IL08/in_fy2008.pdf
Nonperiodical Web Document or Report
Author, A. A. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from http://Webaddress.
Blog and Video Blog Post
J. Dean. (2008, May 7). When the self emerges: Is that me in the mirror? [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.spring.org/uk/the1sttransport