APA Citation Style

APA Citation Style
Based on: American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American
Psychological Association (5 th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
A reference list in APA style is organized alphabetically by the first word in each citation.
Italicize the main title. Capitalize the first letter of the first word in the title and, if there is a
subtitle, capitalize the first letter of the first word in the subtitle. Use initials for the authors’ first
and middle names. Citations are double-spaced. With the 5 th edition APA style has resumed
using a hanging indent. In this format, indent all subsequent lines after the first line. This
format is shown below.
PRINT SOURCES
BOOK – ONE AUTHOR
Collins, L. (1975). Freedom at midnight. New York: Simon and Schuster.
BOOK – CORPORATE AUTHOR
Public Agenda Foundation. (1997). The health care crisis: Containing costs, expanding
coverage. New York: McGraw-Hill.
BOOK – MULTIPLE AUTHORS
Landre, R., Miller, M., & Porter, D. (1997). Gangs: A handbook for community awareness. New
York: Facts on File.
Guelich, S., Simon, R., Gary, P., & Garcia, G. (2000). CGI programming with Perl (2 nd ed.).
Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates.
BOOK – EDITED
Fitzgerald, T. J. (Ed.). (2000). Police in society. New York: H. W. Wilson.
Thill, J. V., & Bovee, C. L. (Eds.). (1999). Excellence in business communication (4 th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
MULTIVOLUME SET
Parker, S. P. (1997). McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of science and technology (Vol. 5). (8 th ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing.
CHAPTER OR ARTICLE IN A BOOK
Colomb, G. G. (1995). Communicating evidence visually. In W. C. Booth, G. G. Colomb, & J. M.
Williams (Eds.), The craft of research (pp. 175-200). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ARTICLE – PRINT ENCYCLOPEDIA OR DICTIONARY
Mumming: Geese dancing, guising, masking, mummering (2000). In T. Gulevich (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of Christmas (pp. 388-394). Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.

ARTICLE – PRINT NEWSPAPER
Bush v. Gore [Editorial]. (2000, December 12). Washington Post, p. A46.
ARTICLE – POPULAR MAGAZINE
Provine, R. R. (2000, November/December). The science of laughter. Psychology Today, 33, 58-
61.
ARTICLE – SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
Clark, L. A., Kochanska, G., & Ready, R. (2000). Mothers’ personality and its interaction with
child temperament as predictors of parenting behavior. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 79, 274-285.
ARTICLE – BOOK REVIEW
Jamison, L. (1998, June 7). [Review of the book The pilot’s wife]. The New York Times Book
Review, 103, 37.
ARTICLE – FILM REVIEW
Lane, A. (2000, December 11). Come fly with me [Review of the motion picture Crouching tiger,
hidden dragon]. The New Yorker, 129-131.
ONLINE SOURCES
ARTICLE – ONLINE DATABASE
Hughes, J. H. (2000). Technological leadership [Electronic version]. The Journal of Social,
Political, and Economic Studies, 25, 303-18. Retrieved December 11, 2000, from the
WilsonSelect database.
Jost, K. (2000, September 29). Copyright and the internet [Electronic version]. CQ Researcher,
10, 769-790. Retrieved December 10, 2000, from the CQ Researcher database.
Madonna. (1998). Celebrity biographies. Retrieved October 7, 1998, from the Lexis-Nexis
Academic Universe database.
Pace, B. (2000). Depression [Electronic version]. JAMA, Journal of the American Medical
Association, 284, 1606+. Retrieved December 11, 2000, from the ProQuest database.
ARTICLE – ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA
Literacy. (2000). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved December 10, 2000, from
http://www.Britannica.com.
Spain, T. (1997). Space technology. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved October
11, 1998, from http://gme.grolier.com/gme-ol/static/base/gme-srch.htm.

ARTICLE – ONLINE JOURNAL
Heilemann, J. (2000, October). David Boies: The Wired interview [Electronic version]. Wired, 8.
Retrieved December 11, 2000, from http://www.wirednews.com/wired/
archive/8.10/boies.html.
Walsh, J. (1997, December 12). Catholic school bad girl. Salon. Retrieved September 22, 2001,
from http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1997/12/19feature.html.
Sullivan, D. (2000). Search engine math. Search Engine Watch. Retrieved August 20, 2000,
from http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/math.html.
ARTICLE – ONLINE REVIEW
Ebert, R. (2000, December 8). [Review of the motion picture Proof of Life]. [Electronic version].
Chicago Sun-Times Online. Retrieved December 11, 2000, from
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2000/12/120803.html.
ARTICLE – ONLINE NEWSPAPER
Stevens, W. K. (1998, April 28). New evidence finds this is warmest century in 600 years
[Electronic version]. New York Times. Retrieved April 28, 1998, from
http://www.nytimes.com.
WEB PAGE
Liu, A. (2001, August 9). The voice of the shuttle: Technology of writing page. Retrieved
September 27, 2001, from the University of California, English Department Web site
http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/techwrit.html.
United States. Federal Emergency Management Agency. (1998, January 14). Hurricane fact
sheet. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved December 11, 2000, from http://www.fema.
gov/library/hurricaf.htm.
MEDIA SOURCES
AUDIOTAPE
Covey, S. R. (1990). The seven habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal
change [Audio recording]. New York: Simon and Schuster Audio.
VIDEOTAPE
Birtwistle, S. (Producer) & Lawrence, D. (Director). (1996). Emma [Motion picture]. New York:
New Video Group.
TELEVISION PROGRAM
Rader, J. (Director). (2000, December 12). Decision 2000: Battle for the White House. In J.
Stevens (Producer), Hardball with Chris Matthews. New York: MSNBC.

ERIC DOCUMENT
Brown, G. (1999) Information skills: How information literate are New Zealand children? Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and
the Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne, Australia. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service No. ED 438 298).
INTERVIEW
APA recommends to cite interviews within the body of the text only; do not list interviews or
personal e-mail communications in your reference list (Publication Manual, 5 th ed. p. 214.).
EXAMPLE: T. Thumb (personal communication, August 28, 2000)
(J. Folkkes, personal communication, June 6, 1999)
IN-TEXT REFERENCE
Cite the author and the year of publication. Do not cite the page number unless quoting
directly.
EXAMPLE: Gemelli and Jumeaux (1999) compared two hundred sets of identical twins
Many electronic sources do not have page numbers so use the paragraph number (if available)
and precede it with the paragraph symbol or the abbreviation para.
EXAMPLE: (Kruschke & Bradley, 1995, ¶ 7)
If paragraph and page numbers are not available, cite the heading and the number of the
paragraph that follows it.
EXAMPLE: (Fishbein, 2001, Method section, para. 2)
QUOTATIONS
For a quote of less than 40 words, enclose quote with quotation marks and provide the author,
year and page number in parentheses at the end of the quote.
EXAMPLE: “Identical twins’ cognitive and emotional bonds are twice as strong as those
found in fraternal twins” (Gemelli & Jumeaux, 1999, p. 22).
For quotes of 40 or more words, type the quotation in block format and omit quotation marks.
Indent the block quotation 5 spaces from the regular text and double-space the quotation.
For all other questions involving APA style, please consult the Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association, 5 th ed.
Good luck!
Created by Anne C. Moore Revised by Susan E. Beck 3/21/02