General guidelines for the APA reference list

• Alphabetize entries in the list of references by authors’ last names; if a work has no author, alphabetize it by its title.
• Invert all authors’ names—put the last name first, followed by a comma; use initials for the first and middle names.
• With two or more authors, use an ampersand (&) before the last author’s name. Separate the names with commas. Include names for the first seven authors; if there are eight or more authors, give the first six authors, three ellipsis dots, and the last author.
• If the author is a company or an organization, give the name in normal order.
• Put the date of publication immediately after the first element of the citation. Enclose the date in parentheses, followed by a period (outside the parentheses).
• For books, give the year of publication. For magazines, newspapers, and newsletters, give the exact date as in the publication (the year plus the month or the year plus the month and the day). For sources on the Web, give the date of posting, if it is available. Use the season if the publication gives only a season and not a month.

• Italicize the titles and subtitles of books, journals, and other long works.
• Use no italics or quotation marks for the titles of articles.
• For books and articles, capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle and all proper nouns.
• For the titles of journals, magazines, and newspapers, capitalize all words of four letters or more (and all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs of any length).

• Take the information about a book from its title page and copyright page. If more than one place of publication is listed, use only the first.
• Give the city and state for all US cities. Use postal abbreviations for all states.
• Give the city and country for all non-US cities; include the province for Canadian cities. Do not abbreviate the country and province.
• Do not give a state if the publisher’s name includes it (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, for example).
• In publishers’ names, omit terms such as “Company” (or “Co.”) and “Inc.” but keep “Books” and “Press.” Omit first names or initials (Norton, not W. W. Norton, for example).
• If the publisher is the same as the author, use the word “Author” in the publisher position.

• For a journal or a magazine, give only the volume number if the publication is paginated continuously through each volume; give the volume and issue numbers if each issue of the volume begins on page 1.
• Italicize the volume number and put the issue number, not italicized, in parentheses.
• For monthly magazines, give the year and the month; for weekly magazines, add the day.
• For daily and weekly newspapers, give the month, day, and year; use “p.” or “pp.” before page numbers (if any).
• For journals, magazines, and newspapers, when an article appears on consecutive pages, provide the range of pages. When an article does not appear on consecutive pages, give all page numbers: A1, A17.

• For articles and books from the Web, use the DOI (digital object identifier) if the source has one, and do not give a URL. If a source from the Web or a database does not have a DOI, give the URL.
• Use a retrieval date for a Web source only if the content is likely to change. Most of the examples in 61b do not show a retrieval date because the content of the sources is stable. If you are unsure about whether to use a retrieval date, include the date or consult your instructor.