List authors’ last names first, and use only initials for first and middle names. The in-text citations in your text point readers toward particular sources in your list of references (see 50c).

name cited in signal phrase in text

name in parenthetical citation in text

beginning of entry in list of references

Models 1–5 on pp. 466–67 explain how to arrange author names. The information that follows the name of the author depends on the type of work you are citing—a book (models 6–15), a print periodical (models 16–23), a digital written-word source (models 24–34), or another kind of source (models 35–48).

1. one author. Give the last name, a comma, the initial(s), and the date in parentheses.

2. multiple authors. List up to seven authors, last name first, with commas separating authors’ names and an ampersand (&) before the last author’s name.

Note: For a work with more than seven authors, list the first six, then an ellipsis (…), and then the final author’s name.

3. corporate or group author

4. unknown author. Begin with the work’s title. Italicize book titles, but do not italicize article titles or enclose them in quotation marks. Capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle (if any) and proper nouns and proper adjectives.

5. two or more works by the same author. List works by the same author in chronological order. Repeat the author’s name in each entry.

If the works appeared in the same year, list them alphabetically by title, and assign lowercase letters (a, b, etc.) after the dates.