Although style sheets cover many aspects of paper writing and presentation, the main focus is how to give credit to other people’s ideas and how to help readers find the complete, referenced documents which contain those ideas in the easiest possible manner.

Formatting Style

For the body of your papers you should use a 12 pt. font, with indented, double line spaced paragraphs and no extra line between paragraphs. Unfortunately, as of the time this page was last reviewed (Spring, 2018) default Microsoft Word styles place an extra line between paragraphs. This can be changed changing the default style or by removing the extra space automatically inserted after paragraphs (paragraph menu). Body text should be left justified. Papers include page numbers starting with the title page as page 1. Talk to your instructor about how title pages are to be formatted.

Papers should not contain any colored text. There may be exceptions to this on which you and your instructor can agree. Since Microsoft Word automatically formats hyperlinks to be blue and underlined these will need to be changed. Either turn off the auto-formatting control or highlight the link, select add hyperlink, and select remove link.

Citations and References

References should be as reliable, accurate and accessible as possible. If a reference is available both in printed form and from the WWW, use the printed reference. Be sure that electronic references are accessible by any reader so links to documents inside of proprietary databases (EBSCO is a propriatary database) should not be used. If an original research paper on a topic is available and another author cites that material, read and reference the original research paper, not the secondary source whenever possible. Chat groups and e-mails are not to be used as references because the reader cannot access the original documents. Refereed journals are generally the most defensible references.

Remember that in APA papers there is an exact match between the documents that are cited in the body of the paper and the documents listed in the reference list.

After the text of your paper, insert a first level heading entitled Reference List. Each reference listed below this heading will be included in a single, double-spaced paragraph. The paragraph will have a hanging indent. For the hanging indent, the second and all subsequent lines of the paragraph are indented and the first line is not.

Below are the most frequently used types of references. For more unusual ones, ask one of us or look it up in the APA manual referenced at the end of this section.

Authors are listed last name first, with initials only following. Multiple authors are separated by commas, with a comma-space-ampersand (, &) separating the last two authors.

Capitalize only the first word in the title and subtitle (subtitles are what follows the colon) and any proper nouns of a reference.

Additional Resources

The following links may be additional helpful references for using APA in your paper:

• Purdue Writing Lab (APA link on the right hand navigation bar)
• APA Headings
• APA Tables
• Writing in APA Style

Here are some examples, some of which are from the APA manual:

Book

Cone, J. D., & Foster, S. L. (1993). Dissertations and theses from start to finish: Psychology and related fields. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Edited Book

Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: Psychological interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Book with Edition

Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.

Chapter in a Book

Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp. 309-330). Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Page numbers of the chapter are included in a referenced book chapter.
• The book title is in italics and not the chapter title.
• If there are only two editors of the book then no comma precedes the ampersand.

Journal Article

Kilmoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 45(2), 10-36.

• The journal title is in first letter caps. It is a proper name.
• The journal title and the volume number are in italics; not the article title.
• Issue number are not in italics.
• Issue numbers are not used when the volume page numbers are continuous.
• “pp.” is not used prior to the page numbers in journal references.

ERIC Document

Mead, J. V. (1992). Looking at old photographs. Retrieved from ERIC database (ED346082).

• This is the basic form of an ERIC document reference. The EDRS number will always start with ED because the EJ references should always be the direct journal reference.

Newspaper Article (discontinuous pages)

Lublin, J. S. (1980, December 5). On idle: The unemployed shun much mundane work, at least for a while. The Wall Street Journal, pp. 1, 25.

• Unlike journal references, pp. is used before the page numbers of a newspaper article.

World Wide Web

Postman, N. (1993). Of luddites, learning and life. Technos Quarterly, 2(4). http://www.technos.net/journal/volume2/4postman.htm

• If you are referring to a Web site and not a specific document at the site then you need to do your best to determine an author, date of publication, and publisher. There are ways to list the reference if you cannot find this information but they should be used as a last resort.
• If a document is retrieved from a Web site (example above) then the document reference follows the normal guidelines for references except that the source is the the url path to the document.

Video

Newton, T. (c 1996). Medical alert. Biotech Productions. 38 minutes.

• The reference begins with the producers name.
• There are many types of electronic resources that you may have need to reference. The form is generally the same but each is slightly different in specifics. You need to look them up if you are going to use them.

Author's name as part of the narrative

Johnson (1987) found…

In 1987 Johnson found…

Author's name not included in the narrative

Cooperative learning (Johnson, 1987) has been found…

• The citation should generally appear as close to the introduction of the idea as is possible, although other placements are acceptable.

Cooperative learning has been found to be a successful classroom strategy (Johnson, 1987).

Multiple Authors

Johnson and Johnson (1987) found…

Cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1987) has been found…

• An ampersand and no comma are used to separate two name multiple author citations inside of parentheses. If there are three or more names, commas are used in addition to the ampersand between the last two names: (Smith, Jones, & Brown, 1987).
• Note that there are a whole bunch of rules referring to what to do with multiple authors multiple times. Basically, in citations with two authors both authors are always listed. With more than two authors, only the first author is listed followed by et al.: (Everman et al., 1984).

Multiple Citations

Cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1987; Slavin, 1982) has been found…

Short Quotations

Quotations of less than 40 words should remain in the body of the text.

Johnson (2014) said, "Measures of student teaching showed strong correlations internally and moderate correlations with the TWS evaluation" (p. 17).

• The period at the end of the quotation is placed after the closing parenthesis of the page number citation.
• Quotations embedded in the text are the only time quotation marks should be used. Emphasis of a word or phrase should be shown with italics.

Long Quotations

Quotations of more than 40 words should be presented in a double spaced, indented block without quotation marks.

Johnson (2014) also suggests:

Measures of the TWS showed moderate correlations internally.  Learning gain scores and content area test scores were weakly correlated with all other measures of candidate performance. The absence of moderate or strong correlations among different assessments suggests they are measuring different constructs supporting the use of a comprehensive set of standards-based assessments to determine candidates’ readiness for licensure. (p. 17)

 

• ALL quotations are accompanied by a page number.
• In block quotations the text of the quotation ends with a period. There is no punctuation after the page number citation.
• Quotations are different than a term or short phrase particular to an author. Those should be in italics and not cited.

Citing Page Numbers for Quotes in Electronic Texts

If the electronic text has page numbers use them for citing quotations.

For electronic sources that do not provide page numbers, use the paragraph number, if available, preceded by the paragraph symbol or the abbreviation para. If neither paragraph nor page numbers are visible, cite the heading and the number of the paragraph following it to direct the reader to the location of the material.

(Myers, 2000, ¶ 5)

(Beutler, 2000, Conclusion section, para. 1)

Conversations or Email

Personal and public conversations, and email references should not be included in the reference list. If this material is important it should be described in the text of the document but not cited.

During an unpublished lecture on April 23, 1999, Gardner indicated that…

• Because they can't be checked these are weak references and should be avoided.

APA Style Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.