Documenting Sources
MLA Style
APA Style
• APA Style:
  In-Text Citations
• APA Style: Content Notes
• APA Style:
  List of References
• APA Style: Student Sample
Chicago Style
CSE Style



EasyWriter Resources / Documenting Sources /
APA Style: List of References

The alphabetical list of the sources cited in your document is called References. (If your instructor asks that you list everything you have read—not just the sources you cite—call the list Bibliography.) APA style specifies the treatment and placement of four basic elements—author, publication date, title, and other publication information.
  • Author. List all authors' last names first, and use only initials for first and middle names. Separate the names of multiple authors with commas, and use an ampersand (&) before the last author's name.
  • Publication date. Enclose the date in parentheses. Use only the year for books and journals; use the year, a comma, and the month or month and day for magazines; use the year, a comma, and the month and day for newspapers. Do not abbreviate.
  • Title. Italicize titles and subtitles of books and periodicals. Do not enclose titles of articles in quotation marks. For books and articles, capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle and any proper nouns or proper adjectives. Capitalize all major words in a periodical title.
  • Publication information. For a book, list the city of publication (and the country or postal abbreviation for the state if the city is unfamiliar), a colon, and the publisher's name, dropping Inc., Co., or Publishers. For a periodical, follow the periodical title with a comma, the volume number (italicized), the issue number (if appropriate) in parentheses and followed by a comma, and the inclusive page numbers of the article. For newspapers and for articles or chapters in books, include the abbreviation p. ("page") or pp. ("pages") before the page numbers.
The following sample entries use hanging indent format, in which the first line aligns on the left and the subsequent lines indent one-half inch, or five spaces. This is the customary APA format for final copy, including student papers.
Directory to APA Style for a List of References
BOOKS
1. One author
2. Two or more authors
3. Organization as author
4. Unknown author
5. Editor
6. Selection in a book with an editor
7. Translation
8. Edition other than the first
9. One volume of a multivolume work
10. Article in a reference work
11. Republication
12. Two or more works by the same author(s)
PERIODICALS
13. Article in a journal paginated by volume
14. Article in a journal paginated by issue
15. Article in a magazine
16. Article in a newspaper
17. Editorial or letter to the editor
18. Unsigned article
19. Review
20. Published interview
21. Two or more works by the same author in the same year
ELECTRONIC SOURCES
22. Article in an online periodical
23. Article or abstract from a database
24. Document from a Web site
25. Chapter or section of a Web document
26. Email message or real-time communication
27. Online posting
28. Software or computer program
OTHER SOURCES
29. Government document
30. Dissertation abstract
31. Technical or research report
32. Conference proceedings
33. Film, video, or DVD
34. Television program, single episode
35. Recording


BOOKS


Lightman, A. P. (2002). The diagnosis. New York: Vintage Books.


Walsh, M. E., & Murphy, J. A. (2003). Children, health, and learning: A guide to the issues. Westport, CT: Praeger.


Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, National Research Council. (2002). Abrupt climate change: Inevitable surprises. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.


Use the word Author as the publisher when the organization is both the author and the publisher.

Resources for Rehabilitation. (2003). A woman's guide to coping with disability. London: Author.


National Geographic atlas of the Middle East. (2003). Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.


Dickens, J. (Ed.). (1995). Family outing: A guide for parents of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. London: Peter Owen.


Burke, W. W., & Nourmair, D. A. (2001). The role of personality assessment in organization development. In J. Waclawski & A. H. Church (Eds.), Organization development: A data-driven approach to organizational change (pp. 55–77). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.


Al-Farabi, A. N. (1998). On the perfect state (R. Walzer, Trans.). Chicago: Kazi.


Moore, G. S. (2002). Living with the earth: Concepts in environmental health science (2nd ed.). New York: Lewis.


Barnes, J. (Ed.). (1995). Complete works of Aristotle (Vol. 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.



If no author is listed, begin with the title.

Dean, C. (1994). Jaws and teeth. In The Cambridge encyclopedia of human evolution (pp. 56–59). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.


Piaget, J. (1952). The language and thought of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1932)



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

Goodall, J. (1999). Reason for hope: A spiritual journey. New York: Warner Books.

Goodall, J. (2002). Performance and evolution in the age of Darwin: Out of the natural order. New York: Routledge.



PERIODICALS


O'Connell, D. C., & Kowal, S. (2003). Psycholinguistics: A half century of monologism. The American Journal of Psychology, 116, 191–212.


Hall, R. E. (2000). Marriage as vehicle of racism among women of color. Psychology: A Journal of Human Behavior, 37(2), 29–40.


Ricciardi, S. (2003, August 5). Enabling the mobile work force. PC Magazine, 22, 46.


Faler, B. (2003, August 29). Primary colors: Race and fundraising. The Washington Post, p. A5.


Zelneck, B. (2003, July 18). Serving the public at public universities [Letter to the editor]. The Chronicle Review, p. B18.


Annual meeting announcement. (2003, March). Cognitive Psychology, 46, 227.


Ringel, S. (2003). [Review of the book Multiculturalism and the therapeutic process]. Clinical Social Work Journal, 31, 212–213.


Smith, H. (2002, October). [Interview with A. Thompson]. The Sun, pp. 4–7.



List the works alphabetically by title, and place lowercase letters (a, b, etc.) after the dates.

Shermer, M. (2002a). On estimating the lifetime of civilizations. Scientific American, 287(2), 33.

Shermer, M. (2002b). Readers who question evolution. Scientific American, 287(1), 37.



ELECTRONIC SOURCES


The APA Style Guide to Electronic References (2007) includes guidelines for citing various kinds of electronic resources, including Web sites; articles, reports, and abstracts; some types of online communications; and computer software. Updated guidelines are maintained at the APA Web site (www.apa.org). The basic entry for most sources you access via the Internet should include the following elements:
  • Author. Give the author's name, if available.
  • Publication date. Include the date of Internet publication or of the most recent update, if available. Use n.d. ("no date") when the publication date is unavailable.
  • Title. List the title of the document or subject line of the message, neither italicized nor in quotation marks.
  • Publication information. For articles from online journals, newspapers, or reference databases, give the publication title and other publishing information as you would for a print periodical.
  • Retrieval information. For a work from a database, do the following: If the article has a DOI (digital object identifier), include that number after publication information; do not include the name of the database. If there is no DOI, write Retrieved from followed by the database name and the document number assigned by the database, if any. For a work found on a Web site, write Retrieved from and include the URL.

Give the author, date, title, and publication information as you would for a print document. Include both the volume and issue numbers for all journal articles. If the article has a DOI, include it. If there is no DOI, include the URL for the article or for the periodical's home page (if the URL is long or if the article is available by subscription only). For newspaper articles accessible from a searchable Web site, give the URL only.

Steedman, M., & Jones, G. P. (2000). Information structure and the syntax-phonology interface. Linguistic Inquiry, 31, 649–689. doi: 10.1162/002438900554505

Lou, L., & Chen, J. (2003, January). Attention and blind-spot phenomenology. Psyche, 9(2). Retrieved from http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v9/psyche-9-02-lou.html





Give the information as you would for a print document. Include both the volume and issue numbers for journal articles. If the article has a DOI, include it, and omit the name of the database. If there is no DOI, include the name of the database and the document number, if any. If you are citing an abstract, use the notation Abstract retrieved.

Crook, S. (2003). Change, uncertainty and the future of sociology. Journal of Sociology, 39(1), 7–14. Retrieved from Expanded Academic ASAP database (A101260213).

McCall, R. B. (1998). Science and the press: Like oil and water? American Psychologist, 43(2), 87–94. Abstract retrieved from PsycINFO database (1988-18263-001).



Include information as you would for a print document, followed by information about its retrieval. If no author is identified, give the title of the document followed by the date (if available).

DotComSense: Commonsense ways to protect your privacy and assess online mental health information. (2000, January). APA Monitor, 31, 32. Retrieved January 25, 2001, from http://helping.apa.org/dotcomsense/



After the chapter or section title, type In and give the document title, with identifying information, if any, in parentheses. End with the date of access and the URL.

Salamon, Andrew. (n.d.). War in Europe. In Childhood in Times of War (chap. 2). Retrieved April 11, 2005, from http://remember.org/jean


Do not include entries for email messages or real-time communications (such as IMs) in your list of references; instead, cite these sources in your text as forms of personal communication.




List an online posting in the references list only if the message is retrievable forma mailing list's archive. Give the author's name and the posting's date and subject line. Include other identifying information in square brackets. For a listserv message, include both the name of the list and the URL of the archived message.

Troike, R. C. (2001, June 21). Buttercups and primroses [Msg 8]. Message posted to the American Dialect Society's electronic mailing list, archived at http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/ads-l.html For a newsgroup posting, end with the name of the newsgroup. (If the author's real name is unavailable, include the screen name.)

Wittenberg, E. (2001, July 11). Gender and the Internet [Msg 4]. Message posted to news://comp.edu.composition


PsychMate [Computer software]. (2003). Available from Psychology Software Tools: http://pstnet.com/productsPsychMate


OTHER SOURCES


Office of the Federal Register. (2003). The United States government manual 2003/2004. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U.S. Public Health Service. (1999). The surgeon general's call to action to prevent suicide. Retrieved November 5, 2003, from http://www.mentalhealth.org/suicideprevention/calltoaction.asp



If you use Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI), include the volume, issue, and page number. If you use the UMI digital dissertation service, include the UMI number.

Bandelj, N. (2003). Embedded economies: Foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe (Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2003). Dissertation Abstracts International, 64 (03), 1083. (UMI No. 3085036)


McCool, R., Fikes, R., & McGuinness, D. (2003). Semantic web tools for enhanced authoring (Report No. KSL-03-07). Stanford, CA: Knowledge Systems Laboratory.


Mama, A. (2001). Challenging subjects: Gender and power in African contexts. In Proceedings of Nordic African Institute Conference: Rethinking power in Africa. Uppsala, Sweden, 9–18.


Moore, M. (Director). (2003). Bowling for Columbine [Motion picture]. United States: MGM.


Imperioli, M. (Writer), & Buscemi, S. (Director). (2002). Everybody hurts [Television series episode]. In D. Chase (Executive Producer), The Sopranos. New York: Home Box Office.


The Avalanches. (2001). Frontier psychiatrist. On Since I left you [CD]. Los Angeles: Elektra/Asylum Records.




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