APA guide

The APA citation and referencing system (from the American Psychological Association) is used internationally for academic writing in the social sciences and education fields, including linguistics, education, psychology, and others. It is a parenthetical name+date system, that is, author names and publication dates are cited in parentheses within the body of a paper, with full references at the end of the paper. Currently, the 6th edition of the APA is commonly used. The APA guide contains specifications for in-text source citations, end references, and paper format (the format specifications are mainly used for course papers, theses and dissertations, and paper drafts submitted to journals).

1 Overview

The APA style specifies how sources are cited in the text of a paper, by means of in-text citations and end references.

1.1 In-text citation of sources

Works are cited within the text of a paper with author last name(s) and publication year in parentheses, or the author name(s) stated directly in the sentence with years in parentheses. Ampersands (&) are used only inside parentheses for multiple authors, while 'and' is used for names outside of parentheses.

At least one recent applied phonology text by Yavaş (2011) has addressed this issue …
A recent survey (Nevalainen & Traugott, 2012) notes that ...
A recent survey by Nevalainen and Traugott (2012) notes that ...
One recent study (En, Brebner & McCormack, 2014) reported that ...

The in-text citation goes inside the sentence, and if it comes at the end, it still is placed before final punctuation (inside a final period, that is, the period comes after the closing parenthesis of the citation). In the example below, the names and years can all be inside parentheses, or if the name is directly used in the sentence, then the year immediately follows in parentheses.

Such widely skewed distributions have been noted by several recent surveys (Wolfson, 1998; Johns et al.; 2001; Manatee, 2004). However, some like Wolfson (1998) arguing for a best fit from a logistic distribution, while others (Johns et al., 2001; Karpo, 2008) argue for a binomial distribution.

For citing multiple sources together, each entry is separated by a semi-colon, and they are ordered alphabetically according to the first author.

Recent studies have shown that East Asian students overuse certain transitional items (Ahn & Lee, 2001; Kim, 2004; Lee & Smith, 2003; Lee et al., 2008) due to …

1.2 End references

At the end of a paper, a section called 'References' appears (or 'Reference', if only one source is used). Full bibliographic information appears here for all sources cited in the text (and only for those cited in the text). Notice that the year appears in parentheses in the final bibliographic citation, in strict APA in formal publications. The titles of books, magazines, and scholarly journals are italicized, followed by the volume number (for journals or other periodicals) and the page numbers. Titles of articles or chapters are not italicized. When the citation is longer than one line, the second line is indented five spaces or one tab space – a hanging indentation format, like below.

References

En, L.G.W., Brebner, C., & McCormack, P. (2014). A preliminary report on the English phonology of typically developing English–Mandarin bilingual preschool Singaporean children. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 49(3), 317-332.

Yavaş, M. (2011). Applied English Phonology. Malden, Mass.: John Wiley & Sons.

The end references are not numbered, but use a hanging indent layout (the first line aligns with the left margin, and the rest of the entry is indented about 1.25 cm to the right). In MS Word, right-click for paragraph properties, and for paragraph format, chose handing indent, and use the default 1.25 cm (1/2 inch) setting. In LibreOffice, edit the paragraph properties or bibliography format properties; manually create a 1.25 cm text indent, and a -1.25 cm reverse indent for the first line. For papers in university and graduate school courses, this section is usually on a separate sheet of paper; for a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation, it forms a separate section or chapter. The bibliographic entries are often double-spaced, at least in course papers and theses.

In official APA, author’s given names are usually initialized, i.e., abbreviated in the end references, e.g., the name John Smith is written as “Smith, J.” This can of course become rather annoying, because “Smith, J.” could also be Jennifer Smith, Jack Smith, Jackqueline Smith, etc.

Journals

Journals are cited as in this example, with the title after the year, and the journal name and volume number are italicized. After the volume number, the issue number is in parentheses (i.e., (2) = issue two of volume 14, or the 14th year of the journal's publications), followed by page numbers. The issue number can be omitted if it is not known.

Zorg, J., Delitz, K., Regan, R., & Krum, A. (1998). Sociocultural aspects of economic growth in ex-Soviet republics. Journal of European Economic and Policy Studies, 14(2), 556-598.

Popular periodicals

Popular periodicals, such as newspapers and magazines, include the date of the particular issue after the year in parentheses.

Springen, K. (1990, December 31). A 100 mile race? No sweat. Newsweek, p. 84.

Books

Books consist of author name(s), year, title, place of publication, and name of publisher.

Nevalainen, T., & Traugott, E. C. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the history of English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Edited volumes

An edited volume is an academic book that consists of original research papers by various authors, often with one or more editors. The page numbers are in parentheses after the book title. The editors' names are initialized and indicated with '(Ed)' or '(Eds.)' for one or more editors.

Ringbom, H. (1999). High frequency verbs in the ICLE corpus. In A. Renouf (Ed.), Explorations in corpus linguistics (pp. 191-200). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Note the capitalization patterns in these examples. The names of journals or periodicals follow traditional capitalization rules, known as title case, where important words (like all nouns) are capitalized. However, titles of books and articles follow sentence case, where only the following are capitalized: (1) the first word of the title, (2) a word after a colon, semi-colon, or dash, and (3) proper nouns; all other words are not capitalized.

Title case

All content words or longer words are capitalized - for names of journals and periodicals.

• Journal of European Economic and Policy Studies
• Washington Post

Sentence case

Only initial words and proper nouns are capitalized (and abbreviations, of course) - for titles of books, articles, and other works.

• High frequency verbs in the ICLE corpus
• Seeds of change: Tracing language evolution and agriculture
• Handbook of psycholinguistics

2 In-text citation details

2.1 Citing authors and sources

2.1.1 Multiple authors & citations

For several citations by the same author, these are listed in reverse chronological order.

Several studies of unusual intransitive verb syntax in this language have appeared in recent years (Zhou, 2015; Zhou, 2014).

For citing two sources by the same author for the same year, the sources can be distinguished with letters, e.g., (Zhou, 2016a) and (Zhou, 2016b), and so on. These are alphabetized by the title of the work, and are ordered and listed similarly in the end references.

This was first reported in Zhou (2016a) and thereafter confirmed in a follow-up study (Zhou, 2016b).

For a source with three to five authors, all authors are listed the first time the source is cited. If the same source is cited later, the subsequent citation contains the first author followed by the abbreviation 'et al.' for the other names (from Latin et alia = ‘and others’) instead of writing out all the names.

One study with Serbian and Slovakian readers (Svrto, Kalus & Paplovsky, 2013) reported slightly different reading patterns with the Cyrillic script than with non-Cyrillic writing systems. .... However, the Serbian study (Svrto et al., 2013) did not adequately control for possible L2 or bilingual interference effects.

For sources with six or more authors, the list is always abbreviated with 'et al.' after the first name. Of course, all names are listed in the end references.

An eye-tracking study on Russian native speakers (Rayner et al., 2015) used a masked priming technique to investigate … An eye-tracking study on Russian native speakers by Rayner et al. (2015) used a masked priming technique to investigate …

In the older APA style, the rule is to use 'et al.' for three or more authors. In the newer APA style (particularly used in psychology), this is used for six or more authors (since psychology researchers often publish many multi-author articles, so “Smith et al., 2002” might apply to multiple papers by Smith and colleagues in 2002).

2.1.2 Similar author names

The APA system of initializing author names in the end references can lead to confusion when similar names are cited in the text, especially similar East Asian names. In that case, in-text citations can, in addition to the family name, contain an initial or even a full name if necessary, to distinguish different authors with the same family names, especially for two sources from the same year.

One study (H. Lee, 2005) found that …, while another (S. Lee, 2005) reported that …

2.1.3 Authorless or undated sources

For sources with no authors, the title or the first few words of the title can be cited in the in-text citation. Undated works can be cited with “n.d.” This occurs mainly with electronic sources; see the section on electronic sources below.

These particle meanings have been classified in a few reference works (e.g., Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary, 2006) in less than intuitive ways.

Recent stories illustrate the problems of trying to confine octopi, such as the popular story of an octopus escaping its aquarium in New Zealand (“Renegade octopus,” 2016). Numerous other historical accounts exist of octopods escaping their tanks or aquariums (Smith, n.d.).

2.2 Direct quotations

One usually reports the ideas, findings, or work of others by paraphrasing and summarizing the relevant information, in one’s own words. Occasionally, one might want to provide a direct quotation – though in linguistics and psychology, this is not very commonly done; it is done mainly if the way the original writer stated it is particularly important or noteworthy. In the in-text citation, the page number from which the quotation comes is given after the year, e.g., “...(Marion, 1997, p. 34)...” for a quotation from page 34, or “...(Marion, 1997, pp. 34-35)...” for pages 34-35. The end reference will be as usual – page numbers for citations are given only in the in-text citation, not in the end references. Shorter quotations can be included in a regular paragraph, but if a quotation would run three lines or more (or 40+ words), it is placed in a separate block-indented paragraph (indented about 1.25 cm from the left margin), with the citation at the end of the quotation, as shown here, or before the quotation in the preceding paragraph. In the first example, the page numbers appear after the final sentence punctuation in the quotation.

1

Regarding this phenomenon, after surveying the previous studies, McMahon (2005) concluded the following, as stated in a previous report: The current system in inexorably corrupt and ethically opaque, with the major corporations essentially chipping away at the regulatory structures and entities that are supposed to hold them in check. (p. 343).

2

Regarding this phenomenon, after surveying the previous studies, McMahon (2005, p. 343) concluded the following, as stated in a previous report: The current system in inexorably corrupt and ethically opaque, with the major corporations essentially chipping away at the regulatory structures and entities that are supposed to hold them in check.

Likewise, if you directly copy any charts, pictures, graphics, figures, or tables from another source into your paper, the page number should be cited in the in-text citation, just as for direct quotations. These could appear in the text of a paragraph, or in a caption below the figure.

In older version of APA, colons were used for page numbers after the year, e.g., (Smith 2015:245) would now be rendered as (Smith 2015, p. 245).

3 End reference details

3.1 Author names

In official APA, author’s given names are usually initialized, i.e., abbreviated in the end references, e.g., the name John Smith is written as “Smith, J.” This can of course become rather annoying, because “Smith, J.” could also be Jennifer Smith, Jack Smith, Jackqueline Smith, or others.

Zorg, J., Delitz, K., Regan, R., & Krum, A. (1998). Sociocultural aspects of economic growth in ex-Soviet republics. Journal of European Economic and Policy Studies, 14, 556-598.

3.1.1 Multiple authors

Authors are separated by commas, with an ampersand before the last author.

Marsh, H. W., & Martin, A. J. (2011). Academic self‐concept and academic achievement: Relations and causal ordering. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(1), 59-77. Monroe, J., Meredith, C., & Fisher, K. (1977). The science of scientific writing. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Torgersen, E. N., & Szakay, A. (2012). An investigation of speech rhythm in London English. Lingua, 122(7), 822-840.

Within the paper, this is cited as “ … (Torgersen & Szakay, 2012) … ”, or, e.g., “Torgersen and Szakay (2011) found that … ”. See the notes above about in-text citations of multiple-author works.

3.1.2 Multiple sources by the same author

Sources by the same author are also separated by semi-colons in the in-text citation and listed in reverse chronological order, e.g., “...(Zhou, 2004; Zhou, 2003). In the references section, they are listed in reverse chronological order, i.e., starting from the most recent works to earlier works. Hence, in-text: (Zhou, 2004; 2003).

Zhou, M. (2004). Analysis of Martian compound verbs. Extraterrestrial Linguistics, 14, 128-132. Zhou, M. (2003). Aspects of Venutian verb morphology. Journal of Exobiology and Linguistics, 5, 11-15.

The same author(s) may publish multiple works in the same year. They are then alphabetized by title and enumerated with lower case letters in the year.

Zhou, M. (2004a). Analysis of Martian compound verbs. Extraterrestrial Linguistics, 14, 128-132. Zhou, M. (2004b). Comparison of North and South Martian dialects. Journal of Extraterrestrial Language and Sociology, 7, 101-119.

These would be cited in the text as “(Zhou, 2004a)” and “(Zhou, 2004b)”.

3.1.3 East Asian names

With East Asian names, initializing names is cumbersome, and can be confusing (as there could be, e.g., multiple C.J. Kim's in one field); this is one area where APA fails in its attempts to be either concise or politically correct. Asian names are initialized depending on whether the first names are hyphenated or written together; e.g., Heekyoung = ‘H.’ and Hee-kyoung = ‘H.-K.’ and Hee Kyoung = ‘H. K.’

Cho, H. (2012). Phonation of Korean glottalized stops. Asian Phonetics Quarterly, 9, 125-134.

Kim, H.-K. (2012). Socioloinguistic contrasts between Nepali and Tibetan EFL learners in Nepal. Sociolinguistics of Asia, 12, 78-85.

Kim, H.K. (2012). The syntax of Middle Korean ergative verbs. Theoretical and Historical Linguistics, 14, 398-407.

How the name is initialized depends on how the person has chosen to romanize it (i.e., transcribe it in Latin letters). However, if the person has not published anything in English, you may not be able to find his/her preferred romanization, and in that case, you have to make your best guess; probably the hyphenated abbreviation is the best default option.

• Single capital: Lee Heekyoung → Lee, H.
• Separate capitals: Lee Hee Kyoung → Lee, H.K.
• Hyphenated abbreviation: Lee Hee-kyoung → Lee, H.-K.

3.1.4 Dutch and German prefixed names

Some Dutch names and a few German names have prepositional prefixes that are generally in lower case (i.e., not capitalized), and are generally ignored when alphabetizing references. These include de, der, van, von and a few others.

Kim, H.K. (2012). The syntax of Middle Korean ergative verbs. Theoretical and Historical Linguistics, 14, 398-407.

van Pelt, L., (2015). Textual semantics in Beethoven's use of Schiller's poetry. Journal of Ethnomusicology and Culture, 2,(2), 145-153.

van der Sandt, R. A. (1992). Presupposition projection as anaphora resolution. Journal of Semantics, 9(4), 333-377.

Zhou, M. (2004a). Analysis of Martian compound verbs. Extraterrestrial Linguistics, 14, 128-132.

4 Types of sources

4.1 Books / monographs

Monographs are academic books by researchers written for an academic audience, which usually present the author's original research. General books might also be cited, particularly those written by academic experts for a less academic audience. The end reference consists of the author, year, book title, location (where it was published, or at least the publisher's main location), and the name of the publisher. The location might consist of city and country or just the city for well known cities (e.g.: Chicago) or city and state or province abbreviation for lesser known places (e.g.: Malden, Mass., or Hillsdale, NJ).

Hattie, J. (2014). Self-concept. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.

Yavaş, M. (2011). Applied English phonology. Malden, Mass.: John Wiley & Sons.

Zarkin, H., & Colton, R. R. (1963). Tables for statisticians. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Sentence case is followed for book titles (initial words are capitalized, others are in lower case); i.e., only the first word, a word after a colon (:) and proper nouns are capitalized; other common nouns are in lower case (however, the references in some journals or books may follow the older style of capitalizing all content words and longer words).

4.1.1 Multiple book authors

For books by multiple authors, in-text citations include both names with the ampersand (&) if the names are in parentheses. In the end references, an ampersand is used before the last author's name.

Edwards, A. J., Weinstein, C. E., Goetz, E. T., & Alexander, P. A. (2014). Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Nevalainen, T., & Traugott, E. C. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the history of English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

4.2 Edited volumes

These are books in which recent research of multiple authors is published in the form of separated articles in a single anthology, which is overseen by an editor or editors. This is usually a one-time book, but sometimes a series. Occasionally you might see the word ‘festschrift’ (German for ‘celebratory writing’), which is a special collection of research articles published in honor of a famous scholar. The end reference includes the initialized names of the editor (Ed.) or editors (Eds.).

Ringbom, H. (1999). High frequency verbs in the ICLE corpus. In A. Renouf (Ed.), Explorations in corpus linguistics (pp. 191-200). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Zhou, M. (2005). Syntactic complexities of Martian linguistics. In Brandt, W. & Schroeder, W. (Eds.), Survey of Martian Linguistics (pp. 245-499). New Jersey: Erlbaum Publishers.

The page numbers follow after the book title. If the entire edited volume is cited, then the end reference begins with the editors' names.

Walker, M.A., Joshi, K. & Prince, E.F. (Eds.) (1997). Centering in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In older versions of APA, page numbers were indicated like so:

Ringbom, H. (1999). High frequency verbs in the ICLE corpus. In A. Renouf (Ed.), Explorations in corpus linguistics, 191-200. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

4.3 Academic journal articles

The author and year are followed by the title of the article, the name of the journal in italics, the journal volume number, with the issue number (which is optional) in parentheses, and the page numbers of the article. The volume number is italicized along with the journal title, but the issue number is in plain font.

Cinque, G. (2014). The semantic classification of adjectives: A view from syntax. Studies in Chinese Linguistics, 25(1), 1-30.

This would be cited within the paper, e.g., as “...(Cinque, 2014)...” or “...Cinque (2014)...” Journals start a new volume every year, and the issue number is optional in the end references. Articles might be paginated by issue, meaning that each issue begins with page 1, or they might be paginated continuously by volume, i.e., page numbering goes continuously through all issues of the same volume (e.g., if issue 1 ends at page 200, then issue 2 starts at p. 201, and so on).

Flax, M. J. (1982). A rhetorical analysis of post-reunification German parliamentarians. Textual analysis, 28(1), 10-17.

Lauterberg, R. U. (1983). A statistical analysis of the popularity of North American plural pronoun substitutes. International Review of Dialect Studies, 38(1), 93-107.

In much older versions of APA, volume-issue numbers would look like ‘38:1’ instead of ‘38(1)’.

4.4 Popular periodicals

Since popular periodicals generally do not follow a volume+issue# format, these are distinguished from other sources in the end references by including the specific publication date after the year (month, or month and day, depending on how it is published). Volume numbers are included if available, and page numbers are included for print editions. The abbreviations p. and pp. are used for newspapers.

Springen, K. (1990, December 31). A 100 mile race? No sweat. Newsweek, 84. Zelig, Z. (2001, August). Understanding intelligence. Observer, p. 239. Zorn, Q. (2015, October 1). Is this the end? The Gotham Daily Gazette, pp. 1A-2A.

Cite the first article as (Springen, 1990), or, e.g., “...Springen (1990) has noted that...”.

4.5 Electronic, undated, and authorless sources

Electronic versions of academic journals and books are cited and referenced exactly like their print counterparts. There might be a few journals or sources that are only online or electronic, and thus have no page numbers, and these can be cited as described below. Sources lacking page numbers, volume numbers, author names, or dates are less common in academic writing (except in certain humanities fields), as they may not be very scholarly, peer reviewed sources. For more on electronic and informal sources, as well as popular or non-academic materials, search for APA guides at [owl.english.purdue.edu]. If you have many such sources, you may be in a humanities field where the MLA or Chicago style would be more appropriate, as these systems can better accommodate such sources.

For authorless or anonymous sources in APA, the title appears before the date in the end reference. Note that no period follows the URL.

Renegade octopus escapes tank into drainhole. (2016, May 28). News Web Site. Retrieved from http://www.newswebsite.com/world/asia/20160528

In the in-text citation, the title can be abbreviated and put inside quotation marks, like so:

Recent stories illustrate the problems of trying to confine octopi, such as the popular story of an octopus escaping its aquarium in New Zealand (“Renegade octopus,” 2016).

4.5.1 No date or author

Cite the web page name in the in-text citation, with “n.d.” for no date, e.g., (Smith, n.d.). No periods follow after the URL in the end reference.

GVU’s 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000, from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/Gvu/user_survey-1997-10

4.5.2 Daily newspaper article, electronic version

Hilts, P.J. (1999, February 16). In forecasting their emotions, most people flunk out. New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2000, from http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/16/science/in-forecasting-their-emotions-most-people-flunk-out.html

4.5.3 Message from an online discussion group

Lewandowski, A (2000, March 9). Changing names and the effects on professional status for newly married women [MSG7]. Message posted to http://www.theknot.com/discussgroup.

In the references section, items like “retrieved from” or the date retrieved or downloaded can sometimes be omitted, especially when APA is followed less strictly.

4.6 Informal sources

Popular media sources are not usually cited in academic papers (such as blogs, TV shows, films, SNS feeds, and popular websites). For more on informal, popular or non-academic sources and materials, search for APA guides at owl.english.purdue.edu, or adapt an existing APA specification that might work for such a source.

Sometimes, informal sources are cited in the text but not listed in the end references, particularly those that are not worth documenting formally, or are non-essential. For example, in a linguistics paper about the colloquial usage of a particular English expression, one would cite academic linguistic sources that pertain to the linguistic analysis of the expression, but the writer would also cite many examples from colloquial sources, which would not belong in the end references. Such sources can be cited with footnotes instead of parenthetical in-text citations. The footnotes can provide a URL or an APA-like reference for the source, and these can be excluded from the end references.

Another informal source might be by means of personal communication that you had with a scholar, researcher, or other reputable or authoritative person, e.g., via email or verbal communication. This can be cited in the text “personal communication” or “p.c.” , e.g., (Smith, p.c.); this is not listed in the end references. In less formal papers like term papers, you might likewise cite someone’s lecture notes in the same way as “...Hack (lecture notes)...”.

According to Hack (p.c.), Silurians use this pronoun quite commonly.

5 See also

5.2 Other pages on referencing / citation systems:

  Academic versus non-academic sources

  APA (overview)

  APA guide

  Chicago Manual

  Chicago Manual (parenthetical)

  Citation systems

  Harvard style

  IEEE style

  MLA guide

  Popular sources

  Professional sources

  Reporting verbs

  Reporting verbs (introduction)

  Unreliable sources

  Writing literature reviews