Place a period after the closing parenthesis. Place the date of publication in parentheses immediately after the name of the author. If there are more than six authors, list only the first one and use et al. If there is more than one author, use an ampersand (&) before the name of the last author. The periodical title is run in title case, and is followed by the volume number which, with the title, is also italicized. The exceptions to this rule would be periodical titles and proper names in a title which should still be capitalized. The APA guidelines specify using sentence-style capitalization for the titles of books or articles, so you should capitalize only the first word of a title and subtitle. Capitalization, Abbreviation, and Punctuation Hanging IndentationĪll APA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first line of an entry should be flush left, and the second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2'.

Always check with your instructor regarding their preference of using italics or underlining. But, if you use a computer, then publication names should be in italics as they are below. If you write a bibliography by hand, you should still underline the names of publications. When reports were written on typewriters, the names of publications were underlined because most typewriters had no way to print italics. With the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma after the year unless another punctuation mark goes there. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. If the author's name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.įor dates, spell out the names of months in the text of your paper, but abbreviate them in the list of works cited, except for May, June, and July. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) Only the initials of the first and middle names are given.

Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, References. For more information on the APA format, see. For example, to cite both print books and ebooks, use the books and reference works category and then choose the appropriate type of work (i.e., book) and follow the relevant example (e.g., whole authored book).Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA). For example, a report from a government website would use the reports category, whereas a page on a government website that is not a report or other work would use the webpages and websites category.Īlso note that print and electronic references are largely the same. When selecting a category, use the webpages and websites category only when a work does not fit better within another category. To find the reference example you need, first select a category (e.g., periodicals) and then choose the appropriate type of work (e.g., journal article) and follow the relevant example. Examples of the most common works that writers cite are provided on this page additional examples are available in the Publication Manual.

More than 100 reference examples and their corresponding in-text citations are presented in the seventh edition Publication Manual.

Apa reference sample page