APA Style Guide: 6th Edition

　

Summary of Guidelines for Formatting References According to the APA Style Guide: 6th Edition

Reference List

   

The reference list appears at the end of your paper (but before any appendix and the biographical material). It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper.

Each source you cite in the paper (with the exception of personal communications) must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text. Make sure that the spelling of authors’ names and dates of publication are identical in both places.
 

Authors’ names are inverted (last name (surname) followed by a comma and the initial(s) of first name(s)). Give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work, keeping them in the same order as in the original work. (See section on multiple authors for exception on works with more than seven authors.)

Capitalization and Italicization of Titles

Capitalize all major words in the title of a journal, magazine, or newspaper. When referring to any work that is not one of these, such as a book, article, or Web page, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns.


Do not capitalize the first letter of the second word in a hyphenated compound word.


Italicize the title of the primary work you are citing, such as a book, journal, magazine, or newspaper. If you are referencing a chapter in a book or an article in a journal, magazine, or newspaper, do

Order of reference list:
not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the title of the article or chapter.  

List works in alphabetical order by primary author’s last name (or first significant word at beginning of reference if no author).

If you have more than one work by the same author (or authors in the exact same order), list them in order by the year of publication, starting with the earliest.

When an author appears both as a sole author and, in another citation, as the first author of a group, list the one-author entries first.

References that have the same first author and different second and/or third authors are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the second author or the last name of the third if the first and second authors are the same.

If you are using more than one reference by the same author (or the same group of authors listed in the same order) published in the same year, organize them in the reference list alphabetically by the title of the article or chapter (excluding A or The). Then assign letter suffixes to the year.

If the author is an organization or a group alphabetize by the first significant word of the name. Use full names, not abbreviations. A parent body precedes a subdivision, for example, University of the West, Department of Management.

If the author uses a suffix, such as Jr. or III, put it after the author’s initials, as in the following example for Dain.

Examples:

Berndt, T. J. (1996). Exploring the effects of friendship quality on social development. In W. M. Bukowski, A. F. Newcomb, & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), The company they keep: Friendship in childhood and adolescence (pp. 346-365). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Berndt, T. J. (2002). Friendship quality and social development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 7-10.

The computer gender gap. (2001, July 31). The Boston Globe, p. A5. [Alphabetized using “computer.”]

Dain, K., Jr. (1991). Women and computing: Some responses to falling numbers in higher education. Women's Studies International Forum, 14, 217-225.

Wegener, D. T. (2002a). Bias and the news media. Santa Rosa, CA: Informing Science Institute.

Wegener, D. T. (2002b). Informing and misinforming. Santa Rosa, CA: Informing Science Institute.

Wegener, D. T., & Mason, E. (1999). Mood management across affective states: The hedonic contingency hypothesis. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 66, 1034-1048. Psychology Journal, 68(3), 36-51.

Wegener, D. T., & Petty, R. E. (1995). Flexible correction processes in social judgment: The role of naive theories in corrections for perceived bias. Psychology Journal, 68(3), 36-51.