Smarthinking Writer's Handbook

Chapter 3, Lesson 14: Section 2

Documentation: APA Style

Introduction

If you're writing a paper for a class in the social sciences or business, chances are good that you're going to be asked to follow the style guide of the American Psychological Association, or APA. (Remember, if you're not certain what style guide you need to follow, always ask your instructor.)

When you are working in a field where theories and information can change over time, it's important to know the date of a source. For this reason, APA uses an author/date system to cite sources. Since your citations use the date of publication as well as the name of the author, get in the habit of jotting down the date for your source while you're taking notes from that source. It will make it much easier on you to use those sources in your paper.

You are required to give credit to your sources any time that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote information from the source. Most citations occur in two places: in the text of the paper at the spot where you've inserted the borrowed information and in your References, a list of those sources to which you have referred in the text of the paper.

Formatting your paper using APA guidelines

The APA guidelines are designed for manuscripts that will be submitted to journals. However, they can be used for student papers as well. There are a few conventions that you should observe when you're formatting your paper following the APA guidelines. (PLEASE NOTE: IF YOUR SCHOOL HAS SPECIFIC GUIDELINES ABOUT FORMAT, THOSE GUIDELINES TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ANYTHING WRITTEN HERE OR IN THE APA GUIDE.)

• Title page: You do need a title page, and your school or your instructor may give you school-specific guidelines for this. If you have no other guidelines, include at the least the title of the paper (centered in the middle of the page), the course, the date/term, and your name. You do not need to include a page number on the title page, but if you're submitting the paper for publication, you should include a running header. You can get more information about that in the APA manual.
• Preliminary pages: If you are writing a thesis or dissertation, you will usually have an approval page, an acknowledgement page, a table of contents, a list of tables and figures, and an abstract. (Be sure to check with your school for specific requirements for the abstract since many schools require that the abstract follow the guidelines for inclusion in Dissertation Abstracts International.)
• Header: You should use a header that is a shortened title (not your name). Put that header in the upper right, and place the page number five spaces after the end of the header, flush with the right margin. Use Arabic numerals, and begin with page 1 for the title page. (Check with your school for page number requirements. Some schools require preliminary pages to be numbered using lowercase Roman numerals.)
• The first page of your paper: Type your title, centered, at the top of the page, and then double space. Begin your paper immediately following that.
• Spacing and indentations: Use double spacing throughout your paper. Indent the first line of each new paragraph, and do not include an extra line of space between paragraphs. Use only one space following all end punctuation.
• Margins and fonts: Use standard 1 or 1.25 inch margins. (Note: if your thesis or dissertation will be bound, be sure to check your school's requirements for the left margin.) Use a standard 12 point font in an easy to read type (like Times New Roman or Arial).
• Figures and tables: In student papers, APA allows for the placement of tables and figures within the text of the paper. Put any short table or figure as close to the first reference as possible. While you can work a short table or figure into the text, a longer table or figure should not be worked into the text. Instead, place the table or figure on the page immediately following the reference to it. Since text can change when you make revisions, always remember to double check figures and tables to be sure that they do indeed follow the reference. Both tables and figures are numbered consecutively, as they are mentioned in the text, beginning with Table 1 and Figure 1. Use Arabic numerals to designate the number. Put the table number and title at the top of the table. Place the figure number and caption at the bottom of the figure.
• Appendices: If you need to add material (such as your survey instrument or other documentation) you should include those things in appendices following the main part of your document. Check with your school for specific guidelines.

Using headings to help you with organization

APA allows for (and even encourages) the use of different levels of headings to organize your paper. If you're using headings correctly, you can make an outline of your paper from those headings. There are five levels of headings available to you, but most papers do not require that many. Generally three levels, or perhaps four, will be enough. The placement of the headings depends on how many levels you're using.

Using three levels of headings: If you use three levels of headings in your paper, the major heading is centered and the title is upper and lower case (title case). The next level should be italicized and flush left. This heading also uses title case (upper and lower case). The third level is indented and italicized, and the heading ends with a period. In addition, this level of heading uses an uppercase letter only for the initial word in the heading. Here's an example of how this might look in a paper.

Setting and Participants

My first paragraph in this section would begin right after the heading.

The Setting

My first paragraph would begin here.

My first paragraph would begin here.

You will find a much more detailed discussion of the various levels of headings in the APA guide.

Citing your sources

Like all citation styles, APA requires rigorous attention to details in citing your sources. As the writer, you are responsible for setting clear boundaries between the information that you've found in your sources and your own ideas. You should use tag and signal phrases (according to Smith (2003)..., as Jones (2004) notes..., Thomas (2001) points out...) to mark your quotations, of course, but you should also use those same signal phrases to mark any summaries or paraphrases that you might use in your paper.

If you don't use the author's name in a tag or signal phrase, you can include the name and date in your parenthetical citation at the end of the borrowed information. Be careful when doing this, though. It's more difficult to set up those boundaries between your ideas and the information from your sources if you don't use tag and signal phrases.

There is one use of the parenthetical citation that is very common in writings that follow APA guidelines. When you're not summarizing or paraphrasing from the source itself, but you are referring to that source in some way, you need to name the source. In that case, you might have something that looks like this:

In this case, the sources are listed in the parenthetical citation, in alphabetical order, and separated by semicolons.

Using quotations

Summaries and paraphrases are always good options, but once in a while there is something that simply needs to remain just as the author wrote it. When that happens, you need to use a direct quotation. Here are some points to remember about using quotations:

• Quotations form a part of your own sentence structure. You should never simply drop a quote into your paper. Readers need to understand where the quote comes from and what point it supports, and integrating the quote into your sentence structure will make that clearer.
• Use the name of the author or authors in a tag phrase. Put the date of publication (in parentheses) after the name. Using tag phrases in this way helps to set up clear boundaries between your ideas and the ideas that you found in your sources. Always use only the last name of the author. If you have two authors with the same last name, you can distinguish between them by using a first initial as well, but APA does not use the first name of the authors in the citations. If your source has no author, then you can use a shortened title in place of the author.
• When a work has more than one author, you should use the names of both authors if there are two. For a work with three to five authors, you should list all authors for the first reference. After that you can simply use the first author's name, followed by the words “et al” (meaning, “and others”). For any work with six or more authors, just use the name of the first author followed by the words “et al”. Note that the words et al. are not in italics nor quotation marks in the actual citation. There is a period following al., as in this parenthetical citation: (Jones et al., 2002).
• With a short quotation (anything under 40 words) the page number comes at the end of the quote, in parentheses, with the abbreviation p. to indicate that it's a page number. That parenthetical citation is actually seen as a part of your sentence, so the period follows the closing parentheses.
• If you are using an electronic source, you may not have page numbers to use in your citations. Use paragraph numbers or section headings if those are more appropriate. If you're using paragraph numbers, the abbreviation para. or the symbol ¶ should precede the number. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for your reader to locate the information that you've cited in the text.
• With a long quotation (anything 40 words or longer) the page number follows the quotation in a parenthetical citation. But the citation is not considered a part of the sentences, so the period comes before the citation. If your quote falls on more than one page (as in our example below) then you use the abbreviation pp. to indicate pages. When you have a long quote, you set it up differently. You indent the entire quotation five spaces from the left margin, but you don't change the spacing of your paper. You do NOT use quotation marks. The indention tells readers that you're quoting. If, however, something in your original source was in quotation marks, then you need to use quotation marks to let your readers know that. Since you have not yet used any quotation marks, you use the standard double quotes. If you have this situation (a quote within your quote) in a short quote, then you use single quotation marks inside your doubles to indicate that to your readers. You can find out more about standard use of quotation marks in Lesson 10: Quotation Marks

An example might make all of this clearer, so let's take a look at what a typical paragraph from a paper using APA documentation might look like.

Citation Examples

If your readers want to find your sources to do some reading of their own, you'll need to give them more information than the name and date you've included in the text of the paper. You provide that information in the References section of the paper. References provide the bibliographic information for your sources. Each source has its own entry, and they are placed in alphabetical order, using the last name of the author or, if there is no author, the title of the work. Each entry is double-spaced and uses hanging indention (where the first line is flush with the left margin and subsequent lines are indented from that margin). Your references should always start on a new page, with the word References centered at the top of that page. All of the entries included in this section are things that you've referred to in the text of the paper, so if there is no corresponding in-text citation, you cannot include the work on your References page.

We can provide you with examples of the more commonly used types of citations. If you don't find the type of source you've used here, look in a good handbook, consult the APA style guide (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association) or check the APA web site.

Citation examples—books and miscellaneous sources

Citation examples-journals and periodicals

Citation examples-electronic sources

Citation examples-miscellaneous sources