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APA Citation Style: Home

What is APA Citation Style?

APA citation style refers to the rules and conventions established by the American Psychological Association for documenting sources used in a research paper. APA style requires both in-text citations and a reference list. You should use this when citing your Science papers.

General information for your APA citations

  • In APA citation style your list of sources is placed on a separate page at the end of the document and is titled References.
  • List all sources in alphabetical order, either by the author's last name or if there is no author by the title of the article or book.
  • If there is no date for your source, do not leave blank. Write n.d. Ex.: (n.d.)
  • Use only the initials of the author’s first (and middle) name.
  • For edited books, place the editors’ names in the author position and enclose the abbreviated Ed. or Eds. in parentheses after the last editor’s name.
  • In titles and subtitles of articles, chapters, and books, capitalize only the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns
  • Italicize book titles, journal titles, and volume numbers.
  • Indent the second and following lines 5 spaces.
  • Capitalize only the first word of a title or subtitle that are part of a title.
  • Use an ampersand (&) instead of the word "and" when listing multiple authors of a single work.

Video on how to create a Parenthetical Citation

APA Citation Worksheet

Cite an Illustration or Table

  • If you created your own table , simply label it Table and give it a number. If you created your own illustration or graph, simply label it Fig. and give it a number.
  • However, if you are using tables or documents created by another source, use the guide below to give the author credit.

Parenthetical Citations & Example Paper with Citations

Any source information that you provide in your parenthetical citation MUST correspond to the source information on the Reference page. Specifically, whatever word or phrase you include in your parenthetical citation, MUST be the first word(s) that appears at the beginning of the corresponding entry on the Reference page.

Example - APA Reference Page

See what your References page should look like. The Reference page should:

  • Be the last page of your paper with the words References centered at the top of the page.
  • Be listed in alphabetical order
  • The second line of a citation should begin with a hanging indent

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