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Citation Styles: APA

APA (American Psychological Association) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. 

End-of-Text References

Articles

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of Publication). Title of article: Capital after colon. Title of Journal, Volume(Issue),Page Range. URL or DOI


Books

Paper

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of Publication). Title of book: Capital for subtitle. (Edition ed.). Publisher Name.

eBook

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of Publication). Title of book: Capital for subtitle. Publisher Name. http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/


Newspaper Article

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Title of Newspaper. http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/


Nonperiodical Web Document or Report

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Site name. http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/


Examples retrieved from Purdue OWL: APA Formatting

Style influenced by Citation Styles, UWM Libraries

In-Text References

Direct Quotations

If you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and page number for the reference (preceded by "p." for a single page and "pp." for a span of multiple pages, with the page numbers separated by an en dash). You can introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author's last name followed by the date of publication in parentheses.

According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199). 

Jones (1998) found "students often had difficulty using APA style" (p. 199); what implications does this have for teachers?

If you do not include the author’s name in the text of the sentence, place the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number in parentheses after the quotation.

She stated, "Students often had difficulty using APA style" (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but she did not offer an explanation as to why.


Summary or Paraphrase

If you are paraphrasing an idea from another work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text reference and may omit the page numbers. APA guidelines, however, do encourage including a page range for a summary or paraphrase when it will help the reader find the information in a longer work.

According to Jones (1998), APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners.


APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998, p. 199)
.


Examples retrieved from Purdue OWL: APA Formatting

Style influenced by Citation Styles, UWM Libraries

APA Resources

For more information on the APA Citation Style, check out these resources:

Purdue OWL APA Style