APA Style

APA Style
(Used for classes in the social sciences)

*Please consult http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html for the most up-to-date APA electronic citation guidelines.

Headings

Headings are similar to titles for individual sections of the paper. They help the reader see, at a glance, the paper’s organization and hierarchy of ideas. If individual sections can also be divided up, then subheadings are used for each subsection. Most college research papers will not need more than one level of headings. Headings are centered, with the first letter of the first word and subsequent important words capitalized. Subheadings are typed flush against the left margin and underlined.

Margins, Spacing, and Indentations

The margins should be set to at least 1 inch from the top, bottom and sides of each page. Most word processors set the margins to 1 inch automatically. All lines of manuscript are double-spaced. Indent the first line of every paragraph using the tab key.

For quotations longer than 40 words, use a double-spaced block format without quotation marks. Indent each and every line by setting the left indentation of the quotation at ½ an inch.

Page Numbers and Short Titles

Number each page, beginning with the title page, in the upper right-hand corner. The number should appear at least 1 inch from the upper right-hand edge of the page, before the first line of text. Most word processors give the option of automatically paginating for you if specified.

Identify each page, again including the title page, with the first two or three words from the title of the paper. Place the shortened title above or five spaces to the left of the page number. Again, most word processors will include the shortened title with the page number if specified.

Title Page

APA papers must have a title page. At least three pieces of information are required: a title, the author’s name, and an institutional affiliation. All of this information is centered on the page and double-spaced. In the title, capitalize the first letter of the first word and subsequent important words. The author’s name is placed under the title and given in the following order: first name, middle initial and last name. The institution is usually the school where the research was done. This is placed under the author’s name. Other information may be included if specifically requested by the professor. All of the information on the title page should be typed in the same size font as the rest of the paper.

The full title is also included at the top of the first page of text, centered and double-spaced, just like it looks on the title page.

Reference List

The reference list begins on a new page and is double-spaced. The heading “References” is centered at the top of the page. The entries are arranged alphabetically based on the authors’ last names. Each reference entry starts with a hanging indent of ½ an inch.

I. Citations within the text

BASIC FORMAT FOR A QUOTATION

When possible, introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that has the author’s last name followed by a publication date in parentheses. The page number should be inserted at the end of the quotation, in parentheses.

As Doom (1994) reports, "Were it not for all the great guys and my girlfriends at the Writing Workshop--not to mention my boss--I’d have a tough time getting out of bed in the morning" (p.12).

If you don’t use the author’s name to introduce the quotation, use parentheses at the end of the sentence to place the author’s name, the date, and the page number.

(Doom, 1994, p. 12).

BASIC FORMAT FOR A SUMMARY OR A PARAPHRASE

Include the author’s last name and the date, which can be placed in parentheses in a signal phrase or at the end. A page number is not required.

According to Opitz (1994), the tutors don’t get paid unless the client gets an A.

Tutors in the Writing Center don’t get paid unless the client gets an A (Opitz, 1994).

The two formats listed above apply every time a work has just one author. Here are some other possible situations you might encounter.

ONE WORK BY TWO AUTHORS	Identify both authors in either the parenthesis or signal phrase each time you cite the work. When using parentheses, place an ampersand (&) between the authors’ names; in the signal phrase, use "and." Critics around the world recognize the film The Road Warrior as a cinematic masterpiece and lasting interpretation of what a post-nuclear-war world would be like (Doom & Welter, 1989). OR Doom and Welter (1989) recognize the film The Road Warrior as a cinematic masterpiece and lasting interpretation of what a post-nuclear-war world would be like.
ONE WORK BY THREE TO FIVE AUTHORS	Identify all authors in either the parentheses or signal phrase the first time you cite the source. People who know the sport agree that the 1991 Chisholm High School varsity basketball team may have been the best high school basketball team of all time (Krize, Macdonald, Deignan, Rahimi, & Berg, 1992). In subsequent citations, only use the first author’s last name, followed by "et al." in either the signal phrase or the parentheses: In 1991, Ted Krize led them to the Minnesota Boys’ Class A State Championship (Krize et al., 1992).
ONE WORK BY SIX AUTHORS	Use only the first author’s last name, followed by "et al." in all instances: Noted Shakespearean scholar Bill the Cat argues that Hamlet was not intended as a deeply symbolic psychological drama, but rather, it was an early version of the soap opera (Shel et al., 1994).
AUTHOR UNKNOWN	Insert either the complete title in the signal phrase, or the first two or three words of the title in the parenthetical citation. Similarly, two out of every eight writing tutors fail to attend meetings scheduled with the Writing Center, while one out of every eight tutors fails to arrive at work at the assigned hour ("Vicious Rumors and Unsupported Facts," 1994). NOTE: If "Anonymous" is specified as the author, use it as if it were the author’s name: (Anonymous, 1973). Be certain to use "Anonymous" as the author in the Works Cited page too.
CORPORATE AUTHOR	If the author is either a government agency or perhaps a corporate organization with a long name, spell out the name the first time you cite it, followed by an abbreviation in brackets. In subsequent citations, only use the abbreviation. FIRST CITATION: (Students Against Drunk Driving [SADD], 1989). SUBSEQUENT CITATIONS: (SADD, 1989).
TWO OR MORE WORKS IN THE SAME PARENTHESES	When a parenthetical citation identifies two or more works, put them in the order they appear in the list of references, separated by semicolons. (Kwacala et al., 1989; Zender, 1990). Arrange works by the same author in order by year of publication, with the earliest year coming first. (Wiggim, 1992, 1993).
AUTHORS WITH THE SAME LAST NAMES	Include initials with the last names if your reference list contains two or more authors with the same last name. Just as M.L. Cihlar (1993) noted in his review.
PERSONAL COMMUNICATION	Personal communications may include conversations, memos, letters, and similar unpublished person-to-person communications, and should include the author’s name, initials, and precise date. T.J. Berg (personal communication, February 20, 1994) predicts Plummerscrack will open up on a Dinosaurs of College Rock stadium tour featuring Husker Du and REM. NOTE: Personal communications should not be included in your reference list.

II. References

In the APA style, the title of Works Cited is replaced with "References." The reference list starts on a new page at the end of a paper, with the word “References” (Reference, in the case of only one) centered at the top of the page. Note that in a reference list, the entries are double-spaced. Generally, the rules are as follows:

1. The author’s last name is always first and initials should be used in place of all first names. In the event of there being two or more authors, always use an ampersand (&) rather than the word "and."

2. Include all of the last names of the authors; do not use "et al," except when there are more than six authors.

3. The date, in parentheses, should be placed immediately following the final author’s name.

4. Italicize the titles and subtitles of books and websites, but capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle (as well as all proper nouns).

5. The titles of articles are not placed in quotation marks, and only the first word of the title and subtitle should be capitalized (as well as all proper nouns). Capitalize the titles of periodicals as they appear. Italicize the periodical’s title and volume number, but NOT its issue number.

6. When dealing with magazine and newspaper articles and works in anthologies, use the abbreviation "p." before page numbers ("pp." if plural). Do not, however, use them before the page numbers of a scholarly journal.

7. The publisher’s name can be abbreviated as long as it is still identifiable.

8. Alphabetize your list of works cited by the authors’ (or editors’) last names. If neither of these is available, alphabetize by the first word of the title other than a, an, or the.

9. The first line of the entry will not be indented; however, subsequent lines will be indented five spaces.

A. BOOKS

BASIC BOOK FORMAT	Welter, C. (1994). How to find girls at the laundromat. St. Joseph, MN: Doom House.
TWO OR MORE AUTHORS	Calzone, G., & Mendoza, A. (1990). Pipe bombs made easy. Hoboken, MA: Little Sicily Press.
CORPORATE AUTHOR	Intercollegiate Writing Workshop Association. (1975). Idle minds make trouble: Keeping your tutors really busy. Collegeville, MN: St. John’s Liturgical Press.
UNKNOWN AUTHOR	The making of The Planet of the Apes. (1975). Athens, GA: Peach Press.
EDITORS	Ernst, K. (Ed.). (1994). Answers to questions you were either too afraid or too decent to ask. Minneapolis, MN: Family Publishers.
TRANSLATION	Silva, A. (1994). How do you say "bathroom" in this part of the world? A history of the study abroad programs at St. John’s and St. Benedict. (K. Salzer, Trans.). Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
EDITION OTHER THAN THE FIRST	Williams, A. (1993). Solving the Rubik’s cube. (7th ed.). London: Hedgehog.
WORK IN AN ANTHOLOGY	Doom, D. (1990). The butterfly in the sea: A survival guide for saltwater swimming in shark-infested waters. In J. Hendrickson (Ed.), Everything you never wanted to know (but talked about anyway) while trekking through Utah. (pp. 15-34). Doomsday, MT: Shamrock.
TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR	Use the author’s name for all entries. Arrange these entries according to date, with the earliest being first: Tautges, G. (1993). The benefits of beginning your homework at 2:30 in the morning. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Tautges, G. (1994). Why 2:30 is too soon: A re-examination of my earlier doctrines. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.

B. PERIODICALS

ARTICLE IN A JOURNAL PAGINATED BY VOLUME	Hendrickson, J. (1994). Getting there is half the battle. Making Work Tolerable, 21, 180-182.
ARTICLE IN A JOURNAL PAGINATED BY ISSUE	Sehl, J. (1987). Cats: Let’s kill ‘em all. Microwaves, 4(2), 3-7.
ARTICLE IN A MAGAZINE	Opitz, J. (1980, June). I sold my soul for rock and roll back in the 60’s. Rolling Stone, pp. 45-47.
ARTICLE IN A NEWSPAPER	Russel, M. (1994, October 18). Power to the proletariat: How to miss work and keep getting paid. The Record, pp. 3-4.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR	Frisch, A. (1994). What do you mean by "Stay out of Haiti," you pinko? [Letter to the editor]. Boy’s Life, 32(1), p. 2.
REVIEW	Ekberg, K. (1994). [Review of I hate golf: I’ll have no part of their death culture]. National Geographic, 11, 103.
TWO OR MORE ARTICLES BY THE SAME AUTHOR IN THE SAME YEAR	Cite these works as you normally would and arrange them in alphabetical order by title. Add a lowercase letter, beginning with "a," "b," and so on, directly following the year within the parentheses (if the works are a part of a series). Corbett, T. (1994a, October 12). Three lefts make a right. Highlights, pp. 12-13. Corbett, T. (1994b, June 30). Shake your fist at the man by not turning off the lights in your room. Highlights, p. 25.

C. OTHER SOURCES

MATERIAL FROM AN INFORMATION SERVICE OR DATABASE	Willenbring, C. (1994, October). Whatever happened to Omega Race, Gorf, and the Vic 20? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Remembering the First Video Games, Green Bay, WI. (HUGO Document Reproduction Group No. Ed 321 650).
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT	U.S. Department of Transportation (1980). American citizens who own an El Camino should be put on an enemies list. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT	Kuebelbeck, M. (1994). East apartments at the College of St. Benedict: Their tradition of exploiting the weak, and how it can be perpetuated by installing coin operated toilets (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1994). Dissertation Abstracts National Service 31, 1534.
PROCEEDINGS OF A CONFERENCE	Hendrickson, J. (1994). Seeing Gilgamesh and Enkidu as the archetypical Beavis and Butthead "companion" characters. In J. Kwacala & C. Burns (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh Annual International Congress for More Accurate Interpretations of Classical Literature (pp. 22 1-256). Collegeville, MN: Monastic Press.
COMPUTER PROGRAM	Galileo virus [Computer program]. (1992). St Joseph, MN: Computer Services at College of St. Benedict’s.
VIDEOTAPE	Welter, C. (Producer). (1994). How to keep climbing that cargo net when people like Deb Doom are laughing at you: Elementary school physical education [Videotape]. Minneapolis, MN: Disturbed Youth Fund.

III. Footnotes or Endnotes

Notes provide full publishing information, and can be placed at the bottom of the page (a footnote) or at the paper’s end (and endnote).