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ASW Library: APA Citations

APA Style

APA Style is currently in its 7th edition (as of November 2021). APA is most often used in the disciplines of Social Sciences (Psychology, Sociology, Economics, etc.), Business, Nursing. Talk to your teacher about which style you should use for your paper.

Basic Rules

  • Title your bibliography with the word References (no italics or bold)
  • Alphabetize list by the author's last name (or article title if no author)
  • Invert author's name (Last name, author's initials)
  • Use an ampersand & for and ( Smith, J.K., & Wright, K.)
  • For 5 or more authors in your text, use et al. (Latin for and others):  Smith et al. (2015) argued...
  • Place the date immediately after the author's name: Smith (2017) claims that......
  • Capitalize only the first word in the title, the first word in the subtitle, and proper noun  (EXAMPLE: Physics of car crashes: A long term study)
  • Capitalize journal titles
  • Do not use quotation marks around article titles
  • Include the DOI (digital object identifier) if possible. If not, include the URL

APA Style Guide