Sociology

Our APA citation guide was compiled with the help of useful information from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. The Proctor Library's reference sheet for APA citations can come in handy as well.

• All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin.
• Authors' names are given with the last name first; give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work for up to and including seven authors.
• Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work. For multiple articles by the same author, or authors listed in the same order, list the entries in chronological order, from earliest to most recent.
• Present the complete journal title, and maintain the punctuation and capitalization that is used by the journal in its title.
• Capitalize all major words in journal titles.
• 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.
• Italicize the titles of longer works, such as books and journals.
• Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles or essays in edited collections.

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

• For "Location," you should always list the city and the state using the two-letter postal abbreviation without periods (i.e., New York, NY).
• This example book has only one author.

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

• You can also cite an article retrieved from a database as though you were citing a print journal, unless it is from an open-access journal that is only accessible online.
• When listing page numbers for articles, do not use p. or pp. unless the periodical is a newspaper.

Note: The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association states (p.192) that including database information in citations is not necessary because databases change over time. When referencing a print article obtained from an online database (such as a database in the library), provide appropriate print citation information. By providing this information, you allow people to retrieve the print version if they do not have access to the database from which you retrieved the article.