APA Referencing Essentials

In research papers, you must provide accurate references for the sources of your information. Ask your professor which format you are to use, and if the department has a style sheet. This handout provides guidelines (with page references, in case you need more detailed information) from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fourth Edition. This manual is comprehensive, detailed, and fairly easy to use, and provides all the stylistic information you will need to write a paper suitable for publication. A reference copy is available in Counselling Services. (Note: some disciplines, such as English, use a different system of referencing developed by the Modern Languages Association.) Recent journal articles in your discipline are a useful source of models for correct referencing format. An essential source of formatting instruction is the red marks you will discover on your returned papers or reports.

In this handout, examples are in Courier font, and are indented.

Parenthetical Citations

(APA Manual, pp. 168 - 172)

The APA style uses a within-text referencing system rather than footnotes or endnotes. References (in parentheses in your essay) correspond with items in your reference list, at the end of your essay. A reference list is not a bibliography: it includes only material that you have specifically referred to in your essay. Each reference must provide enough information for the reader to identify and retrieve the source. The reference list is described below under "Reference List."

Examples

The following reference includes author, date of publication, and page number.

One author notes that ". . . there is a subtle annoyance evident in an audience that is listening to someone reading a speech word for word" (Lorayne, 1985, p.53).

The following reference does not include page number, since it refers to the content of a work and does not include a direct quotation.

The two drafts were each approximately one-thousand words long and were analyzed completely for T-units (Hunt, 1965) and for clauses and selected clause features.

The following parenthetical reference gives the date only, because the author's name is supplied in the text. In a new paragraph, the publication date must be restated.

Murray (1981) has pointed out that "revision is not just clarifying meaning, it is discovering meaning and clarifying it while it is being discovered" (APA Manual, p. 33).

Use of "et al."

(APA Manual, p.168 - 169)

When a work has two authors, do not use "et al."; always cite both names every time you reference the work. When a work has multiple authors, "et al." is used in referencing, according to the following rules.

Examples

When a work has three, four or five authors, cite all authors the first time the reference occurs:

Wasserstein, Zappulla, Rosen, Gerstman, and Rock (1994) found . . .

Subsequently, for the first citation per paragraph thereafter, use "et al." with the date:

Wasserstein, et al. (1994) found . . .

In subsequent citations within the paragraph, omit the year:

Wasserstein, et al. found . . .

Multiple References in the same parentheses

(APA Manual, p.172)

For works by the same author(s), arrange by year of publication, give surnames once, and separate dates by commas.

A number of studies (Johnson & Wilson, 1992, 1994) . . .

For works by the same author(s) and same year of publication, identify by the suffixes a, b, c, etc.

A number of studies (Johnson & Smith, 1992a, 1992b, in press-a, in press-b) . . .

For works by different authors, arrange by alphabetical order of the surnames of the first author (if more than one author is listed for a single work). Separate citations with semicolons.

A number of studies (Bates, 1989; Johnson, 1992; Wilson & Compton, 1990) . . .

Reference List

(APA Manual, p. 174 ff.)

Order

• Items in the reference list appear in alphabetical order by the surnames of the authors
• If there is more that one author of an article, use the one listed first in the article -- if more than one reference with the same first author and different second or third authors, arrange alphabetically according to surname of the second author, and so on
• If you have several references by one author, put them in date order, oldest to newest -- if the same date, arrange alphabetically by title
• Single author references precede multiple author references of the same author
• If the author is an association, alphabetize by the first significant word of the full official name

General format

(APA Manual, p. 182 ff.)

• Periodical

Author, A. A. (xxxx). Title of article. Title of periodical, xx, xxx-xxx.

Explanation of x's: After author -- date of publication; after title of periodical -- issue number; then page numbers of the article. Underline title of periodical and issue number.

• Book or other non-periodical (eg. report, etc.)

Author, X. X. (xxxx). Title of book. Location: Publisher.

Capitalize only the first word of the title (and subtitle), for both periodical articles and books. Capitalize the major words of the names of periodicals.

Citing Internet Sources of Information

A Brief Citation Guide For Internet Sources in History and the Humanities. This information is based on MLA rather than APA formatting conventions, but may be useful all the same.

Proposed standard for referencing online documents in scientific publications.

Internet Sources of Information on APA Formatting

Using APA Format

APA Publication Manual Crib Sheet

Internet Sources of Information on MLA Formatting

A Brief Citation Guide For Internet Sources in History and the Humanities. This site is mainly concerned with MLA formatting, but has pointers to APA information as well.

General Tips

Appearance counts: papers that are neat, clean, and formatted in the conventions of the discipline receive higher marks than other papers even if the content is identical.

Editing for spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity and conciseness is essential. Editing, however, will not solve problems in organization, or "critical thinking" (analysis of issues, inclusion of relevant information, presentation of an argument, evaluation of points of view, and so on). You should have a clear thesis and know what you are going to say before attempting to write a rough draft. If your problems with writing are in this area, see a Learning Skills Counsellor for help in developing suitable strategies.