APA Citation Style
APA (American Psychological Association) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. APA Style provides a foundation for effective scholarly communication because it helps authors present their ideas in a clear, concise, and organized manner. Uniformity and consistency enable readers to (a) focus on the ideas being presented rather than formatting and (b) sean works quickly for key points, findings, and sources. Style guidelines encourage authors to fully disclose essential information and allow readers to dispense with minor distractions, such as inconsistencies or omissions in punctuation, capitalization, reference citations, and presentation of statistics.
BASIC FORMAT FOR BOOKS
Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name. DOI (if available) Stoneman, R. (2008). Alexander the Great: A life in legend. Yale University Press.
ARTICLE IN PRINT JOURNAL
Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5–13.
ARTICLE IN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL
As noted above, when citing an article in an electronic journal, include a DOI if one is associated with the article.
Baniya, S., & Weech, S. (2019). Data and experience design: Negotiating community-oriented digital research with service-learning. Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement, 6(1), 11–16. https://doi.org/10.5703/1288284316979
DOIs may not always be available. In these cases, use a URL. Many academic journals provide stable URLs that function similarly to DOIs. These are preferable to ordinary URLs copied and pasted from the browser's address bar.
Denny, H., Nordlof, J., & Salem, L. (2018). "Tell me exactly what it was that I was doing that was so bad": Understanding the needs and expectations of working-class students in writing centers. Writing Center Journal, 37(1), 67–98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537363
Note that, in the example above, there is a quotation in the title of the article. Ordinary titles lack quotation marks.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
The 7th edition of the APA manual does not provide guidance on citing conference proceedings. Therefore, this citation models that of an edited collection, which is similar in format.
Lastname, F. M., & Lastname, F. M. (Eds.). (Year). Title of Proceedings. Publisher. URL (if applicable)
Huang, S., Pierce, R., & Stamey, J. (Eds.). (2006). Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM international conference on the design of communication. ACM Digital Library. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1166324&picked=prox
WEBPAGE OR PIECE OF ONLINE CONTENT
If the page names an individual author, cite their name first:
Lastname, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of page. Site name. URL
Price, D. (2018, March 23). Laziness does not exist. Medium. https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01
If the resource was written by a group or organization, use the name of the group/organization as the author. Additionally, if the author and site name are the same, omit the site name from the citation.
Group name. (Year, Month Date). Title of page. Site name. URL
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. (2019, November 21). Justice served: Case closed for over 40 dogfighting victims. https://www.aspca.org/news/justice-served-case-closed-over-40-dogfighting-victims
If the page's author is not listed, start with the title instead. Additionally, include a retrieval date when the page's content is likely to change over time (like, for instance, if you're citing a wiki that is publicly edited).
Title of page. (Year, Month Date). Site name. Retrieved Month Date, Year, from URL
Tuscan white bean pasta. (2018, February 25). Budgetbytes. Retrieved March 18, 2020, from https://www.budgetbytes.com/tuscan-white-bean-pasta/
If the date of publication is not listed, use the abbreviation (n.d.).
Author or Group name. (n.d.). Title of page. Site name (if applicable). URL
National Alliance on Mental Illness. (n.d.). Mental health conditions. https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Conditions
Source: https://apastyle.apa.org/