Listing Sources in APA Style
See a sample reference page.
List your sources at the end of your paper. Title a new page with “References” centered. Double-space your list, and organize it alphabetically by authors’ last names (or by titles for works without an identified author). Arrange several works by the same author by date, moving from earliest to most recent. If an author has two works published in the same year, arrange these alphabetically, and add a letter after each date (2009a, 2009b) so the date in your text citation leads to the correct entry.
Format each entry with a “hanging indent” so that subsequent lines are indented one-half inch (about five to seven spaces), just as a paragraph is. (Use the menu in your software — Format-Paragraph-Indentation — to set up this hanging or special indentation.) Include only sources that you actually cite in your paper unless your instructor requests otherwise.
APA style simplifies the following details:
- Supply only initials (with a space between them) for an author’s first and middle names.
- Use an ampersand (& as in a citation in parentheses), not “and” (as you would write in your paper), before the name of the last of several authors.
- Spell out names of months, but abbreviate terms common in academic writing (such as “p.m.,” “Vol.” for “Volume,” or “No.” for “Number”).
- Capitalize only the first word, proper names, and the first word after a colon in the title of a book, article, or Web site. Capitalize all main words in the title of a journal or other periodical.
- Do not use quotation marks or italics for an article title in your reference list (but use quotation marks if you mention it in your text).
- Italicize a Web site, book, or periodical title (and its volume number).
- List only the first of several cities where a publisher has offices, and add the abbreviated state (unless a university’s name identifies it). For locations abroad, spell both city and country.
- Shorten the name of a publisher, but include “Press” and “Books.”
- Use “Author” instead of the publisher’s name if the two are the same.
- For an article, give volume, issue (if each begins with page 1), and any digital object identifier (DOI), a unique number that identifies it with a permanent link. If no DOI is available for an online article, supply the URL for the journal or publisher home page, even if you used a database.
- Include an access date only for online sources that might change.
- Omit a final period after the URL.
Keep in mind these two key questions, which are used to organize the sample entries that follow:
What type of source is it?
As you prepare your own entries, begin with the author. The various author formats apply whatever your source — article, book, Web page, or other material. Then, from the following examples, select the format for the rest of the entry, depending on the type of source you have used. Follow its pattern in your entry, supplying the same information in the same order with the same punctuation and other features.