The most widely used documentation style in the social sciences—including anthropology, economics, education, management, political science, and psychology—is that of the American Psychological Association (APA), which is detailed in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. (2001). On the APA Web site, you can find examples of how to cite electronic sources as well as a short list of FAQs about APA style. If you use APA style frequently, you may want to obtain APA-Style Helper, a program that formats source citation in APA style. It can be downloaded (for a fee) at http://www.apastyle.org/stylehelper/.
This area of the Web site provides examples of APA parenthetical citations and references entries and a sample student paper documented in APA style.
APA parenthetical citations
Sample APA parenthetical citations
APA references
Sample APA references entries
Sample student paper—APA style
APA parenthetical citations
Parenthetical citations within the text refer the reader to a list of sources
at the end of the text. A parenthetical citation contains the author’s
last name, the date of publication, and sometimes the page number from which
material
is borrowed.
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Sample APA parenthetical citations
Click here to view sample APA parenthetical citations.
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APA references
In APA style, the in-text parenthetical citations refer to the list of sources at the end of the text. The list, titled "References," includes full publication information on every source cited in the paper. The list falls at the end of the paper, numbered in sequence with the preceding pages.
- Arrange the sources alphabetically by the author’s last name, or, if there is no author, by the first main word of the title.
- Double-space everything in the references list.
- Begin each entry at the left margin, and indent the second and subsequent lines five to seven spaces or one-half inch.
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Sample APA references entries
Select the type of source to review examples of APA reference entries.
Books (models 1-11)
Periodicals (models 12-18
Electronic resources (models 19-32)
Other sources (models 33-40)
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Sample student paper—APA style
Sill, Mike. "Microsoft Corporation." 2002.
PDF document
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