Chapter 13: Works Cited
Citation Tip!
Read the assignment instructions to determine which citation style you should use. If you are allowed to choose one for yourself, the most important thing to remember is: use one style per assignment and be consistent, do not mix and match styles within a paper.
APA citation style
The American Psychological Association style is used primarily in the social sciences, including economics, geography, journalism, criminology and law.
APA reference style is based on the following:
- Each reference begins with the author’s last name followed by initial(s), and the list is in alphabetical order
- Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns.
- The first line of each entry in your reference list should be left justified and remaining lines indented one-half inch from the left margin, which is called hanging indentation.
- Italicize titles of longer works such as books and journals, but not the titles of shorter works such as journal articles or essays in edited collections.
- Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works.
- APA recommends providing a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), when it is available, as opposed to the URL. Always check with your instructor to confirm that you should include DOIs or URLs in your bibliography.
See the full list of instructions on citing with APA at the OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab.
APA citation for a journal article
Author surname, initial. (Date). Title of article. Title of journal, volume number (issue number), pages.
Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (1996). The Social Life of Documents. First Monday, 1(1).
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/466
How to cite and reference with APA
When summarizing the facts from another writer’s piece of writing, an in-text citation is used to credit the original author. You can do this by including a short quotation from the original text within your work, or a paraphrase of the ideas, followed by the author and year of publication.
Despite the media’s insistence that it is colourblind, Serena is most often portrayed as a symbol of black pride and heritage. (Schultz, 2005).
Another option is to begin the sentence with a signal phrase that includes the author’s last name followed by the date of publication in parentheses:
According to Schultz (2005), despite the media’s insistence that it is colourblind, Serena is most often portrayed as a symbol of black pride and heritage.
When including a direct quote, add the page numbers.
According to Schultz (2005) “In the overwhelmingly white world of professional tennis, Serena Williams and her older sister Venus are frequently re-presented in the tradition of black pride and heritage” (p. 339).
Include the full reference of the journal article in the References:
Schultz, J. (2005). Reading the catsuit: Serena Williams and the production of Blackness at the 2002 US