APA Style Guidelines
American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Guidelines for Referencing Sources in Text:
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APA style is designed to provide information to the reader in the text about sources of
information that the writer used.
This is typically done by giving the name of the author and the year of publication in the
body of the text of the paper (and later including it in the reference page).
BASIC REFERENCING:
>If you have borrowed an idea from a source, or paraphrased ideas, put the author’s name and the
date of the source in parentheses. For example, in the statement below, the writer is taking an
idea from Duran:
Communicative competence may be comprised of three dimensions—
cognitive, behavioral and affective competence (Duran, 1983).
*notice that the period comes after the citation
>If you indicate the author’s name in the statement, you simply put the year in parentheses just
after the author’s name:
Smith (1979) claimed that proximity is a major determinant of
interpersonal attraction.
>If you are discussing an idea that comes from a variety of sources, you indicate each of them in
parentheses. List them alphabetically:
Similarity is an important variable in interpersonal attraction
(Berscheid & Walster, 1978; Jackson, 1970; Williams, 1974).
*notice for two or more authors on an article, you use the ampersand (&) between names
QUOTATIONS:
>Short quotations (40 words or less) are put in quotation marks. In parentheses, you list the
author’s name, year of publication, and page number(s) for the quotation:
“Shyness is probably a perceptual problem, which may or may not
have any behavioral concomitant” (Kelly, 1982, p. 67).
>For longer quotations, you offset the quote by blocking it indented by 10 spaces on each side,
and you do not use quotation marks.
OTHER THINGS FOR CITING WITHIN THE PAPER:
>If you are citing a source a second time in the same paragraph, you do not need to cite the date
again. But, if you start a new paragraph, then you must cite the date again.
>If you are citing a source that has more than two authors, the second time the source is cited in
the paper, you do not need to list all the authors. Instead, you use the “et al.” designation for all
authors besides the first. For example, in the statement below, the writer is referencing an article
by Burgoon, Buller, White and Ebesu (1994) for the second time:
Burgoon, et al. (1994) examined three different types of
deception.
Guidelines for Reference List
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Start your reference list with the centered title, References.
Reference your sources in alphabetical order (by the last name of the author).
Journal articles and books are referenced slightly differently.
JOURNAL ARTICLE WITH ONE AUTHOR:
List the author’s name, year of publication, name of the article, journal name, volume number,
and pages. APA style prefers what is called a hanging indent. This means the first line of the
reference is flush left and any additional lines are indented. However, APA allows for indenting
the first line and leaving the others flush left if this is easier (I think it is much easier so that is
what I will show).
Metts, S. (1989). An exploratory investigation of deception in close relationships. Journal of
Social and Personal Relationships, 6, 159-179.
*Note: You use only first and middle initials—not names. Only the first word of the article title
is capitalized.
JOURNAL ARTICLE WITH TWO OR MORE AUTHORS:
This is about the same as above.
Buller, D. B., & Burgoon, J. K., (1996). Interpersonal deception theory. Communication Theory,
6, 203-241.
*Note: Journals often have a volume number and issue number—it looks like this: 6(3) This
means that it is in volume six, issue three. Typically, you don’t need the issue number, you only
use the volume number.
BOOK:
You will cite the author’s name, year of publication, name of the book, place of publication and
name of the publisher:
Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
*Note: Only the first word of the title of the book is capitalized.
EDITED BOOK:
An edited book is a book where different authors wrote different chapters. The editor is the
person who put together the chapters. In this case, you need to give information about who wrote
the chapter and about the book & editor. In the example below, the chapter is by Zuckerman,
DePaulo & Rosenthal, and it is in a book edited by Berkowitz.
Zuckerman, M., DePaulo, B. M., & Rosenthal, R. (1981). Verbal and nonverbal communication
of deception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 159). New York, NY: Academic Press.
*Notice that the page numbers of the chapter are listed.