Guides: Help Citing Sources: APA

Quick Start for APA

List of references begin on a new page and titled References.

Sources on the References page should be listed alphabetically by the author's last name.

The entire page should be double spaced. If a citation has more than one line, every line after the first should be indented (also called a hanging indent).

The devil is in the details! Pay special attention to Capitalization, punctuation, and underline and italics formatting.

In addition to providing the full citations for sources, you should include in-text citations in the text of your paper to avoid plagiarism.

Everything listed on the References page should have a corresponding in-text citation. If there is no in-text citation, that means you didn't use the source and the citation does not need to be included.

Make sure to include the author's last name and publication year when paraphrasing, typically as a parenthetical. A direct quote should include the author's last name, publication year, and page number.

Resources

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association A guide to the principles of APA writing.
Purdue OWL Citations From The Writing Lab at Purdue University, this Online Writing Lab (OWL) site helps you cite your sources, format your papers correctly, and even answers common questions about in-text citations. Covers APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles.
The Writer's Handbook From the Writing Center at the The University of Wisconsin - Madison, this site covers the mechanics of writing academic papers, including how to format your paper and cite your sources in a variety of styles (APA, MLA, etc.).