Welcome to the APA Writing Style Page

   APA stands for American Psychological Association. This writing style is used with Education, Psychology, and Social Science majors.  In the APA writing style, the alphabetical list of works cited is called References.

To make an in-text citation:

    After you have written something word for word you must put the phrase in quotations and then cite it.

    To cite in APA style, the author's last name, year of publication, and the page number belong in parentheses after the sentence. A period goes outside the parentheses.

    In APA style it is more common to have the author's name and date of publication in the sentence than in parentheses.

Basic in-text citation:

"The colon is used primarily to call attention to the words that follow it" (Hacker, 1996, p. 460).

To make a References page:

    In APA, the author of the sources comes first in the entry. Use initials instead of first names. With two or more authors, use and ampersand (&) rather than the word "and."

    Entries are put in alphabetical order.

    If there is no author, put the entry in alphabetical order according to its title excluding A, An, or The.

    Indent lines one-half inch after the first one.

Basic References

Book with one author:

Last name, Initials. (year). Title italicized. City of publication, abbreviation of state: Publisher or company.

Anderson, N.H. (1996). A cognitive ambition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Book with two or more authors:

Last names, Initials. (year). Title italicized. City of publication, abbreviation of state: Publisher or company.

Winncott, D.W., Shepherd, R., Johns, J., & Robinson, H.T. (1996). Thinking about children. Reading, MA:               

        Addison-Wesley.

Article of anthology:

Last name, Initials. (year). Title of book. Editors (Eds.), Title of essay (pages). City of publication, abbreviation of state: Publisher

        or company.

Moore, B.R. (1996). The Evolution of Imitative Learning. C.M. and B.G. Galef, Jr. (Eds), Social learning in 

         animals: The roots of culture (p. 291-318). San Diego: Academic Press.
    
Academic Journal: by volume:

Last name, Initials. (year). Title of article. Title of academic journal, volume number, pages.

Pope, K.S. (1996). Memory, abuse, and science: Questioning claims about the false memory                                

        syndrome epidemic. American Psychologist, 51, 957-974.

Academic Journal: by issue:

Last name, Initial. (year). Title of article. Journal, volume number (issue), pages.
    

Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5-13.

Newspaper article:

Last name, Initials. (year, month day). Title of the article. Title of newspaper, page(s).
        

Chandler, D.L. (1997, February 10). Cosmos: Ever closer, ever dearer. The Boston Globe, p. C1, C10.

Encyclopedia:

Last name, Initials. "Title." Title of Reference Book. edition number. date-of-edition. 

Ball, L. "Movie Making in Business." Britannica. 4. 4-15-58.

Website:

Last name, Initials. (date of publication). Title of page [Online]. Available: URL [year, month, day of printout]. 

Boland, P. (no date). Alice cunningham fletcher [Online]. Available: 

            http://www.uwplatt.edu/~nicols/fletcher.html [1997, March 23].