13.7 A Quick Guide to APA formatting

Properly formatted APA citations include two main elements: the reference list entry and the in-text citation. Below you will find sample citations for a couple of commonly used reference types. For a detailed list, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) or reference examples on APA Style website.

Note: For University of Texas at Arlington Students. You may access the Academic Style Tutorial that will help you learn APA 7th edition of style basics. A permanent link to the tutorial is available at UTA libraries website.

Reference List

The reference list is found at the end of your document, and it includes all the sources used when developing your paper or project. References are listed in alphabetical order by the author’s last name, and each reference will have a hanging indent to make it easier to visually distinguish between each reference.

Book

Books list the author, followed by the year, and then the title in italics. The title is in sentence case, which means that you only capitalize the first word, any proper nouns or adjectives, and the first word after a colon or period. APA also includes the publisher’s last name. If the book is accessed electronically, also include the digital object identifier (doi). Figure 13.1 illustrates the components of a book citation in APA format.

Article from a Database

Articles from online databases like Google Scholar or EBSCO include the author names, year of publication, and article title in sentence case. For the journal title, follow the capitalization provided by the journal itself. The journal title and the volume number are in italics. The issue is in parentheses, followed by the page range.

To help the reader access the article, always include the doi (permanent url) if one is available. It is generally listed near the top of the article. It may appear as doi: or https://dx.doi.org/ followed by a sequence of numbers and/or letters. The doi number typically starts with the number 10, as in the example below. If there is a doi available, include it in your citation using the format https://doi.org/[insert doi number]. Figure 13.2 illustrates the components of a journal article citation in APA format.

In-Text Citations

APA in-text citations use the last name(s) of the author(s), followed by a comma and the year of publication. If using a direct quotation, also include the page number where that quotation can be found. The abbreviation “p.” precedes any page numbers. These items are all separated by commas.

In APA format, you can also embed the in-text quotation directly into your sentence (for example, Smith (2001) found that…), which then obviates the need for a parenthetical at the end of the sentence, except in the case of a direct quotation.

Here is a short list of examples of some common types of in-text citations:

No Author

As with the reference list, the in-text citation will use the title if there is no author available. Use the first few words of the title if it is long and place it in quotation marks.

Example: (“Down the Line,” 1895).

Single Author

If the work has a single author, use the author’s last name, followed by a comma and the year of publication.

Example: (no direct quotation) (Clark, 2009).

Example: (direct quotation) (Clark, 2009, p. 42).

Two Authors

When there are two authors, list the last names of both connected by an ampersand (&). Be sure to keep the authors in the order in which they appear on the source.

Example: (Rutledge & LeMire, 2016).

If the citation is a part of the sentence, you would spell out the “and”.

Example: Rutledge and LeMire (2016) explained…

Three or More Authors

When there are three or more authors, list the first author’s last name, followed by et al. This is a Latin phrase meaning “and others” and used in some citation formats to abbreviate a list of names. Notice that the switch to “et al.” occurs after three authors when using in-text citations. In your References list, you will include up to twenty authors.

Example: (Tribble et al., 2002).

Institutional Author

As with the reference list, you will list the organization as the author in the in-text citation.

Example: (Texas A&M University, 2019).

 

This section is derived from the following sources:

Figure 13.1 Adapted by Sarah LeMire from Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, Tor Loney, and Daryl Bullis, The Information Literacy User’s Guide: An Open, Online Textbook, edited by Greg Bobish and Trudi Jacobson (Geneseo, NY: Open SUNY Textbooks, Milne Library, 2014), p. 56, Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial–ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Figure 13.2 Adapted by Sarah LeMire from Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, Tor Loney, and Daryl Bullis, The Information Literacy User’s Guide: An Open, Online Textbook, edited by Greg Bobish and Trudi Jacobson (Geneseo, NY: Open SUNY Textbooks, Milne Library, 2014), p. 57,  Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial–ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

APA Format Quick Reference in Howdy or Hello? Technical and Professional Communication Copyright © 2022 by Matt McKinney, Kalani Pattison, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Anders, and Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.