Department of Psychology

In text  | Reference list

Note: this is only a partial list. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) is available in the Psychology office, Lauinger Library, and FAQ's are online at www.apastyle.org.

Reference Citations in Text

Work by one author:

The name of the author and the year of publication are inserted in the text at the appropriate point:

- Jones (1999) demonstrated that…
- A recent study of conformity (Jones, 1999) demonstrated that…
- In 1999, Jones found that…

If you use the same study later in the paragraph, you don’t need to include the year of publication again.

One work by multiple authors:

- When a work has two authors, always cite both names every time the reference is in the text
- When a work has three to five authors, cite all authors the first time the reference is in the text; use the first author followed by et al. in all subsequent uses.
- When a work has six or more authors, cite only the last name of the first author and follow it with et al. The format is the same as with “work by one author”
- Join names in running text with the word and. In tables, captions, parenthetical material, and in the reference list, use the ampersand symbol (&).

Groups as authors

This rule applies to corporations, associations, government agencies, study groups, etc. Groups that typically go by an abbreviation (e.g. the American Psychological Association, APA) are spelled out in the first citation and abbreviated after that. The basic rule is that the reader should be able to locate the source in the reference section without difficulty.

Works with no author:

- Use the title if it’s an article or chapter. Put the title in double quotation marks and the year of publication:
(“Study Finds,” 1982)
- Italicize the title if it’s a periodical, book, brochure, or report:
The book College Bound Seniors (1979)

Works with an anonymous author

Cite the word Anonymous followed by the year of publication:
(Anonymous, 1987)

Two or More Works within the same parentheses

- Order the citation in the order in which they appear in the reference section. If two works are by the same author, arrange by publication date.
- Separate sources with a semicolon.
- ex: Several studies (Balda, 1980; Kamil, 1988; Pepperberg & Funk, 1990) indicate that…

Specific parts of a source:

- Indicate the page, chapter, figure, table, or equation at appropriate points in the text. If giving a quotation, always give page numbers. The word “page” is abbreviated “p.” and the word “chapter” is abbreviated “chap.”
- For electronic sources, use the paragraph symbol or the abbreviation “para.” followed by the corresponding paragraph number.

 

- Alphabetize by names
- If there are several works by the same author…
- Arrange by year
- One author-entries precede multiple-author entries beginning with the same surname
- References with the same first author but different subsequent authors are arranged alphabetically by the second author, or third author if the two first authors are the same, etc.
- If a work uses an agency as the author, cute the full name of the agency (e.g. American Psychological Association, not APA).
- If there is no author, the title moves to the author position and the entry is alphabetized by the first significant word of the title
- If the author is “anonymous,” spell out Anonymous for the author and alphabetize it as though Anonymous were a true name.

General Reference Forms:

- DOUBLE SPACE CITATIONS!! (they're single-spaced here for space-saving purposes, but in papers, they should be DOUBLE SPACED.
- Hanging indent.
- End every entry with a period. The word et al. gets a period as well.

Periodical:

For article titles, capitalize the first letter of the first word and the first letter of the first word after a semi-colon or colon.

Capitalize significant words in periodical titles

With more than seven authors, abbreviate author seven and beyond with et al.

- Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume(issue), xxx-xxx.

Book:

For nonperiodicals, capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle. The title should be italicized.

- Author, A.A., & Author, B.B. (year). Title of book (pp. xxx-xxx). Location: Publisher.

Book chapter:

For nonperiodicals, capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle. The title should be italicized.

For book chapters, capitalize only the first word of the title. The editor’s names should not be inverted (they should read Firstname Lastname). The title of the book is italicized.

- Author, A.A., & Author, B.B. (year). Title of chapter. In A. Editor, B. Editor, & C. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pp. xxx-xxx). Location: Publisher.

Online periodical:

For electronic sources, use “retrieved from” if the website you give will take you directly to the resource cited. Use “available from” if the website you give will take you to information on how to obtain the cited material. If the information is from a database (such as PsycINFO), just provide the name of the address.

- Author, A.A., Author, B.B., Author, C.C., (year). Title of article. Title of periodical, volume(issue), xxx-xxx. Retrieved month day, year, from source.

Online document:

For electronic sources, use “retrieved from” if the website you give will take you directly to the resource cited. Use “available from” if the website you give will take you to information on how to obtain the cited material. If the information is from a database (such as PsycINFO), just provide the name of the address.

- Author, A.A. (year). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from source.

Reliable electronic sources: how to make sure that your online source is credible

Notes on…

Publication date: Give in parentheses the year the work was copyrighted. For magazines, newsletters, and newspapers, give the year followed by the exact date on the publication. Write “in press” in parentheses for articles that have been accepted for publication but not yet published. Follow the parentheses with a period.

Other links that might be useful:

OWL at Purdue University

University of Southern Mississippi Libraries