What is APA documentation style?

What is APA documentation style

Basic APA Style

Works Cited Page

There are many rules about basic formatting for books. When referring to books, chapters, articles, or Web pages, 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 titles of longer works such as books and journals. Examples are not double-spaced, but your References list should be double-spaced. Examples do not show indented lines after the first line, but yours should be indented.

Citing Books

The most basic entry for a book consists of the author's name, year of publication, the title of the book, publisher city, and the publisher name.

Basic Rules for Books: Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.

The first author's name should be reversed, with the last name coming first, followed by a comma. First names and any middle names are given as initials, each followed by a period. A suffix, such as a roman numeral or Jr./Sr. should appear after the author's first and middle initials, preceded by a comma.

For a book written by two or more authors, separate them by comma, and use an ampersand before the last author's name. If more than six authors are cited, abbreviate the seventh author and any others that follow with "et al."

Book Examples

Cite Book: Sternberg, E. (2000). Just business: Business ethics in action (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Edited Book, No Author: Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Citing Articles

Basic Rules for Articles: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy

Article Examples

Articles in Journal Paginated by Volume: Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.

Articles in a Magazine: Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today's schools. Time, 135, 28-31.

Citing Websites