A Guide to APA Documentation

Click below on the type of source you are trying to cite

The Reference List

The following are examples of materials commonly used in an APA reference list, but do not represent all types or circumstances. For citing sources not mentioned here, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5^th edition, on Reserve at the Circulation Desk in the Library. The citation examples listed below are excerpted from the Publication Manual and the APA website (www.apastyle.org).

The reference list includes only those references cited in the text of the paper. The list follows the last page of the research paper, includes the author’s name in the same position as on the text pages, and continues the page numbering. Its title (References) is centered on the page. The margins are 1" on the top, bottom, and sides.  Begin each entry at the left margin and indent any subsequent line(s) one-half inch. Double-space the entire list, both between and within entries. Alphabetize the entries by the author’s last name or, in the absence of an author, by the title.

Print Materials - Books

Italicize the title of the book. Capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any proper names. Use only the initials of the author’s first and middle names (following the last name and a comma).

When citing the place of publication, provide the city, state (using the 2-letter postal abbreviation) or province, and country (for publishers outside the United States). If the publisher is a university and the name of the state is included in the name of the university, do not do not include the state name in the publisher location. The following locations may be listed without a state abbreviation or country because they are cities well-known for publishing.

Baltimore            New York             Amsterdam             Milan             Rome

Boston                Philadelphia         Jerusalem               Moscow         Stockholm

Chicago              San Francisco       London                  Paris             Tokyo

Los Angeles      Vienna

State the publisher in as brief a form as is intelligible. Write out the names of associations, corporations, and university presses, but omit terms such as Publishers, Co., or Inc. Include the words Books and Press. If several cities are named, give the first or, if specified, the location of the publisher’s home office.

Book by a Single Author

        Rosenthal, R. (1987). Meta-analytic procedures for social research (Rev. 

                ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Book by Two Authors

        Beck, C. A. J., & Sales, B. D. (2001). Family mediation: Facts, myths, and 

                future prospects. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Book by Three to Six Authors

        Adams, R. D., Victor, M., & Ropper, A. H. (1997). Principles of neurology 

                (6^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

For more than 6 authors, state the first six (without using an ampersand), followed by a comma and the words et al.

Book with Group Author

        Australian Bureau of Statistics. (1991). Estimated resident population by age 

                and sex in statistical local areas, New South Wales, June 1990 (No. 

                3209.1). Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Author.

When the author and publisher are identical, use the word Author as the name of the publisher.

Edited Book

        Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: Psychological

                interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

No Author or Editor

        Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10^th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA:

                Merriam-Webster.

Book Published in a Subsequent Edition

        Rosenthal, R. (1987). Meta-analytic procedures for social research (Rev. 

                ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Encyclopedia or Dictionary

        Sadie, S. (Ed.). (1980). The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians 

                (6^th ed., Vols. 1-20). London: Macmillan.

Several Volumes in a Multivolume Edited Work (publication over a period of more than a year)

        Koch, S. (Ed.). (1959-1963). Psychology: A study of science (Vols. 1-6). 

                New York: McGraw-Hill.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

        American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual 

                of mental disorders (4^th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

        Laplace, P.-S. (1951). A philosophical essay on probabilities (F. W. Truscott 

                & F. L. Emory, Trans.). New York: Dover. (Original work published 

                1814)

        Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In The new encyclopaedia Britannica 

                (Vol. 26,  pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Print Materials - Periodicals

Capitalize only the first word of the article title and subtitle, as well as any proper names. Give the periodical title in full, using upper and lower case letters. State the volume number, but do not use the word Vol. before the number. If each issue of a journal begins with page one, give the issue number in parentheses immediately after the volume number. If a periodical does not use volume numbers, include the month, season, or other designation with the year, for example (1994, April). Italicize the periodical name and the volume number, if any. Give inclusive page numbers. Use p. or pp. before the page number(s) in references to newspapers.

Journal Article by One Author (for more than one author, see the Author    examples in the Book section above)

        Mellers, B. A. (2000). Choice and the relative pleasure of consequences.

                 Psychological Bulletin, 126, 910-924.

Journal Article, Issue Separately Paginated

        Klimoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in

                organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 

                45(2), 10-36.

Journal Article, Paginated Continuously

        Saywitz, K. J., Mannarino, A. P., Berliner, L., & Cohen, J. A. (2000).

                 Treatment for sexually abused children and adolescents. American

                Psychologist, 55,1040-1049.

Article in a Magazine

        Kandel, E. R., & Squire, L. R. (2000, November 10). Neuroscience: Breaking

                down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science, 290, 

                113-1120.

Daily Newspaper Article, No Author

        New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15).

                The Washington Post, p. A12.

Daily Newspaper Article, Discontinuous Pages

        Schwartz, J. (1993, September 30). Obesity affects economic, social status. 

                The Washington Post, pp. A1, A4.

Resources on the Internet are presented and structured in a variety of ways. Regardless of format, direct the reader as closely as possible to the information being cited. At minimum, reference to an Internet source should include an author (if available), a document title, a date (of creation, updating, and/or retrieval), and an address. The following are examples of several types of sources.

Internet Article Based on a Print Source

        VandenBos, G., Knapp, S., & Doe, J. (2001). Role of reference elements in the

                selection of resources by psychology undergraduates [Electronic version].

                Journal of Bibliographic Research, 5, 117-123.

If you are referencing an online article that you have reason to believe has been changed (e.g. the format differs from the print version or page numbers are not included) or that includes additional data or commentaries, you will need to add the date you retrieved the document and the URL.

        VandenBos, G., Knapp, S., & Doe, J. (2001). Role of reference elements in the

                selection of resources by psychology undergraduates. Journal of

                Bibliographic Research, 5, 117-123. Retrieved October 13, 2001, from

                http://jbr.org/articles.html

Article in an Internet-Only Journal

        Fredrickson, B. L. (2000, March 7). Cultivating positive emotions to optimize

                health and well-being. Prevention & Treatment, 3, Article 0001a. 

                Retrieved November 20, 2000, from http://journals.apa.org/

                prevention/volume3/pre0030001a.html

Note that there are no page numbers. And in an Internet periodical, volume and issue numbers often are not relevant.

Article Retrieved from an Aggregated or Subscription Database

        Borman, W. C., Hanson, M. A., Oppler, S. H., Pulakos, E. D., & White, L. A.

                (1993). Role of early supervisory experience in supervisor performance.

                Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 443-449. Retrieved October 23, 

                2000, from PsychARTICLES database.

 Multipage Document Created by Private Organization, No Date

        Greater New Milford (Ct) Area Healthy Community 2000, Task Force on Teen

                and Adolescent Issues. (n.d.). Who has time for a family meal? You do!

                Retrieved October 5, 2000, from http://www.familymealtime.org

When an Internet document comprises multiple pages (i.e., different sections have different URLs), provide a URL that links to the home (or entry) page for the document. Use n.d. (no date) when a publication date is not available.

Chapter or Section in an Internet Document

        Benton Foundation. (1998, July 7). Barriers to closing the gap. In Losing 

                ground bit by bit: Low-income communities in the information age 

                (chap. 2). Retrieved August 18, 2001, from http://www.benton.org/

                Library.Low-Income/two.html

Provide a URL that links directly to the chapter or section.

Document from University Program or Department Website

        Chou, L., McClintock, R. Moretti, F., & Nix, D. H. (1993) Technology and

                education: New wine in new bottles: Choosing pasts and imagining

                educational futures. Retrieved August 24, 2000, from Columbia 

                University, Institute for Learning Technologies Web site: 

                http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/papers/newwine.html

Stand-Alone Document, No Author or Date

        GVU’s 8^th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000, from

                http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1997-10/

Message Posted to a Newsgroup, Discussion Group, or Mailing List

        Chalmers, D. (2000, November 17). Seeing with sound [Msg 1]. Message 

                posted to news://sci.psychology.consciousness

Other Sources

Because personal communications (personal narratives, telephone conversations, e-mail messages, etc.) do not provide "recoverable data," they are not included in the reference list.  Cite personal communications in text only (see below under "Reference Citations in Text")

Reference Citations in Text

Reference citations in text (parenthetical documentation) direct the reader to the material you borrowed for your paper – sources that are listed in the alphabetically arranged reference list (called References).  The APA style of documentation briefly identifies the source by inserting into the text (and enclosing in parentheses) the author’s last name (do not include suffixes such as Jr.), followed by a comma and the year of publication. (Even if the publication date includes a month and year, use only the year in the text citation.) For example:  

PET scans have shown “activation of several regions within the left temporal lobe,    including the temporal pole” when people retrieved proper names (Schacter, 2001).

The above parenthetical reference (Schacter, 2001) indicates that the material comes from the work by Schacter in the reference list:  

Schacter, D. L. (2001). The seven sins of memory: How the mind forgets and remembers. Boston : Houghton Mifflin.

If you include the name of the author (whom you are referencing) in your text, you need not include that name in the parenthetical documentation:

In a recent study of reaction times (Walker, 2000) . . . .

Walker (2000) compared reaction times . . . .

When a source has two authors, cite both names in the text every time the reference occurs in the text. When a work has three, four, or five authors, cite all the authors the first time the source is cited. In subsequent references, cite only the first author, followed by et al. (not italicized and with a period following the “al”). For example:

Wasserstein, Zappulla, Rosen, Gerstman, and Rock (1994) found . . . .  (Use as first citation in text.)

Wasserstein et al. (1994) found  . . . .  (Use as subsequent first citation perparagraph thereafter.)

Wasserstein et al. found . . . . (Omit year from subsequent citations after first citation within a paragraph.)

If a work has six or more authors, cite only the name of the first author, followed by et al. (not italicized and with a period after “al”) and the year for the first and subsequent citations. If the work has a group author, cite that in the text; you may shorten or abbreviate the group author in subsequent citations if it is understandable. If a work has no author, cite in text the first few words of the reference list entry (usually the title). Use quotation marks around the title of an article, and italicize the title of a periodical, book, etc. For example:

       on free care (“Study Finds,” 1982) . . . .

       the book College Bound Seniors (1979) . . . .

Because personal communications (telephone conversations, personal interviews, e-mail messages, etc.) do not provide “recoverable data,” they are not included in the reference list. Cite personal communications in text only. Give the initials and the surname, as well as the date. For example:  

      T. K. Lutes (personal communication, April 18, 2001 ) . . . .

      (V. G. Nguyen, personal communication, September 28, 1998) . . . .

To cite other types of materials in the text of your paper, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (from which this document is excerpted) on Reserve at the Circulation Desk in the Library.

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