Summary of Citation Rules

American Psychological Association.

APA styling:

APA: The Basics.

•  Choosing a front: use 12pt. Times New Roman.

• Spacing, margins and headers:                                                                                                                  Spacing: all papers should have double space throughout.                                                                      Setting margins: your paper should be set to one inch on all sides.                                           Headers: Include a page header, also known as the "running head". The running head is a shortened version of your paper's title and cannot exceed 50 characters including spacing and punctuation.  Put the title on left margin, at the top of every page. The title in the first page should be different that the consequents. Be careful with capitalization and punctuation.  You may want to capitalize the whole title and put the number of each page in the right margin.

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• Sections of your research paper.                                                                  APA style recommends organizing your paper into the following sections:

1_ Title page: Type your title in upper and lowercase letters centered in the upper half of the page. Your title should be no more than 12 words in length and it should not contain abbreviations or words that serve no purpose.                                                           

Beneath the title, type the author's name: first name, middle initial(s), and last name. Do not use titles (Dr.) or degrees (PhD).                                                                                                                             Beneath the author's name, type the institutional affiliation, which should indicate the location where the author(s) conducted the research.

2_ Abstract: on a new page, include the “page header”. On the first line of the abstract page, center the word “Abstract” (no bold, formatting, italics, underlining, or quotation marks). On the next line, write a concise summary of the key points of your research. Your abstract should contain at least your research topic, questions, participants, methods, results, data analysis, and conclusions. You may also include possible implications of your research and future work you see connected with your findings. Your abstract should be a single paragraph double-spaced and contain between 150 and 250 words.

3_Main body: it should be double-spaced. Insert the full title of your paper (we are in page 3). Indent the first line of each paragraph of the main body.

4_References: finally, center the title “references” on a new page and capitalize it. Then, put the last name of the authors in alphabetical order. Put double-space between each reference.

Basic Rules

• ·        In “references”, double space all citations but do not skip spaces between entries. All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin (hanging indentation)

• ·        Authors' names are inverted (last name first); give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work. If the work has more than seven authors, list the first six authors and then use ellipses after the sixth author's name. After the ellipses, list the last author's name of the work.

• ·        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.

• ·        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. Do not capitalize the first letter of the second word in a hyphenated compound word.

• ·        Italicize 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.

Citing books:

First include the author’s name followed by a period. Then, include the year of publication in parenthesis followed by a period. Place the title of the book in italics followed by a period. Capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle. Next indicate the location of publication, using the two letter postal abbreviation. Finally, include the publisher followed by a colon, and then include the publisher followed by a period.

Citing articles from scholarly journals:

Write the author’s name, last name; first and middle initials and a comma. Indicate the year in parenthesis and the title of the article followed by a period. List the title of the scholarly journal in italics followed by a comma. Indicate the volume in italics and place the issue number in parenthesis and regular font followed by a comma. Indicate the inclusive pages followed by a period.

Citing magazines:

Author, A.A. (date). Title of article. Title of periodical. Volume, pages.

E.g.: Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today´s schools. Time, 135, 28-31.

Citing newspapers:

It is nearly identical to the citation for magazines.

Author, A.A. (date). Title of article. Title of newspaper, page number(s).

E.g.: Shultz, S. (2005, December 28). Calls made to strengthen state energy policies. The Country Today, pp. 1A, 2A. (it may include either a p for single pages or pp for double pages).

Citing articles from encyclopedias:

Author, A.A. (Date). Title of article. In Title of Encyclopedia. (Volume, page numbers). City of publication, State of publication: Publisher.

Eg.: Bergmann, P.G. (1993). Relativity. In The New Encyclopedia Britannica. (Vol. 26, pp. 501-508). Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Citing web-based sources:

Eg.: Wooldridge, M.B., & Shapka, J. (2012). Playing with technology: Mother-toddler interaction scores lower during play with electronic toys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33(5), 211-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005 (link the page)

Brownlie, D. (2007). Toward effective poster preparations: An annotated bibliography. European Journal of Marketing, 41, 1245-1283, doi: 10.1108/03090560710821161