APA Examples

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The following are examples from the American Psychological Association Publication Manual, 5th edition. (If you want to print a PDF copy of these examples, select the "Print Version" button.) Please note: that in APA, all lines after the first are indented 5 spaces

Use these examples to help you complete the exercise on the left.

Book

1. Book with 1 author:

Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year). Title italicized. Publication location: Publishing company.

Example

Townsend, R. M. (1993). The medieval village economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2. Book with 2 authors:

First Author’s last name, First and Second Initial., & Second Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year). Title italicized. Publication location: Publishing company.

Example

Gonzalez, A., & Norwine, J. (1998). The New Third World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

3. Book with 2 editors:

First Editor’s last name, First and Second Initial., & Second Editor’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Eds.) (Year). Title italicized. Publication location: Publishing company.

Example:

Tannen, D., & Alatis, J.E. (Eds.) (1986). Languages and linguistics: The interdependence of theory, data, and application. Washington: Georgetown University Press.

4. Article or chapter in a book with an editor:

Author’s (of article or chapter) last name, First and Second Initial. (Year). Title of article or chapter. In Editor’s First and Second initial and last name (Ed.) Title of book italicized. (page numbers). Publication location: Publishing company.

Example:

Ong. W. J. (9182). Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures.In D. Tannen (Ed.), Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. (pp. 12 - 24). Washington DC.: Georgetown University Press.

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Journal/Magazine

Journal citations: APA states that if the pagination of each issue is continuous throughout the volume, you don’t need to use the issue number. However, if each issue begins with page 1, then the issue number is needed in the citation. The authors of this tutorial believe that this is a very difficult distinction to make and so we are always using the issue numbers with our examples.

5. Article from journal with 1 author:

Author’s last name, First and second Initial. (Year). Article title. Journal Title, volume number italicized(issue number), page numbers.

Example:

Wann, D. L. (1998). A Preliminary Investigation Of The Relationship Between Alcohol Use And Sport Fandom. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 26(3), 287-291.

6. Article from journal with 3 authors:

Author’s last name, First and Second Initial., Author’s last name, First and Second Initial., & Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year). Article title. Journal title, volume number italicized(issue number), page numbers.

Example:

White, S., Winzelberg, A., & Norlin, J. (1992). Laughter and stress. Humor, 5(3), 343-55.

7. Article from a Magazine:

Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year, Month Date). Article title. Journal title, volume number (if given) italicized, page numbers.

Example:

Stein, J. (2003 Aug. 4). Just say om. Time, 162, 48-57.

8. Online journal article from a database or index:

Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year). Article title. Journal title, volume number italicized(issue number), page numbers. Retrieved month day, year, from source.

Example:

Tolson, N. (1998). Making books available: The role of early libraries, librarians, and booksellers in the promotion of African American children’s literature. African American Review. 32(5), 9-16. Retrieved October 1, 2002 from Academic Search Premier.

9. Online newspaper article from a database or index:

Author’s last name, First and Second Initial. (Year, Month and date). Article title. Newspaper title italicized, page numbers. Retrieved month, day, year from source.

Example:

Raspberry, W. (2003, Sep 8). No choice but rescue. Washington Post. A21. Retrieved September 9, 2003 from Lexis Nexis Academic.

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Web Site

10. An entire website with an author:

*Note: if you use a source from a website that is associated with a department of a university, then you must include the name of the university and the department in the citation

Author’s Last Name, First and Second initial (if given). (Year, Month and date, if given). Title of the web site italicized. Retrieved month day, year, from source: URL.

Example:

Mandell, L. (1999). Romantic Chronology. Retrieved June 22, 2003, from University of California, Santa Barbara English Department Web site: http://english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/.

11. An entire website without an editor or author:

Title of the web site italicized. (Year, Month and date, if given). Retrieved month day, year) from source.

Example:

CNN.com. (2002, August 24). Retrieved February 18, 2003 from http://www.cnn.com.

12. An article, document, or short work from a website with an author

Author’s Last Name, First and Second Initial. (Year, Month and date if given). Title of article, document, or short work. In Title of the website (italicized). Retrieved month, day, year, from URL.

Example:

Shiva, V. (2002, July 11). Bioethics: A Third World issue. In NativeWeb. Retrieved September 15, 2003, from http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/shiva.html.

13. An article, document, or short work from a website without an author

Title of article, document, or short work. (Year, Month and date if given). In Title of the website (italicized). Retrieved month day, year, from URL.

Example:

The media today: Truth or lies? (2002, May 14). In Flashpoints USA. Retrieved September 14, 2003, from http://www.pbs.org/flashpointsusa/20030916/infocus/.

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Interview

14. An interview conducted by you, the researcher:

According to the APA Publication Manual, because a personal, unpublished interview consists of unrecoverable data, there is no need to cite it in the reference list. Cite personal communications in text only.

Example:

K.W. Schaie (personal communication, April 18, 1993)

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Statistical Source

15. Chart from a statistical source - Statistical Abstracts

Author or Government agency’s name. (Year). Title of statistical table. Title of source italicized. Publication location: Publisher.

Example:

U.S. Census Bureau. (2002). No. 173. Population shifts in the Northeast: 2001 - 2002. Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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In Text Citations

16. APA in text citation examples

The following information is adapted from the 5th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001)

As you are writing your paper, remember that you must provide a reference to your source within the context or text of your paper, (called an "in text reference"). This reference must be provided for everything that you quote, paraphrase, or summarize and must lead back to an entry on your works cited page.

APA guidelines require you to provide the name(s) of the author(s), as well as the date and page numbers of the source where your quoted, paraphrased, or summarized material is located. If you include the author(s)' name within the sentence with the quoted, paraphrased, or summarized material, then you need to put the date in parentheses behind the author(s)'name(s) and the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

Please see the following examples:

Author not mentioned in text:

"To have a coherent and successful interaction, communicators must cooperate and coordinate their responses. Thus, any one interactant has the potential to exert considerable influence over the other" (Street, 2002, p. 202).

Author mentioned in text:

According to Street, (2002) "To have a coherent and successful interaction, communicators must cooperate and coordinate their responses. Thus, any one interactant has the potential to exert considerable influence over the other" (p. 202).

Two or more Authors not mentioned in text:

"Blind Date frames the reality of each date both to invoke accepted notions of aesthetics, economics, social, and intellectual abilities and to punish participants deviations from these norms" (DeRose, Fursich, and Haskins, 2003, p. 177).

Two or more Authors mentioned in text:

DeRose, Fursich, and Haskins (2003) claim that "Blind Date frames the reality of each date both to invoke accepted notions of aesthetics, economics, social, and intellectual abilities and to punish participants deviations from these norms" (p. 177).

*Please note*

When a work has between three and six authors, cite all of the authors the first time. After the first in text citation, only cite the last name of the first author followed by et al.

DeRose et al. (2003) claim that "Blind Date frames the reality of each date both to invoke accepted notions of aesthetics, economics, social, and intellectual abilities and to punish participants deviations from these norms" (p. 177).

No Author:

When citing a work without an author, write the first few words of the title of the work followed by the date of publication. If the work is an article from a journal, magazine, website, or chapter in a book, place quotation marks around the title. If the work is an entire periodical, book, website, or brochure, italicize the title. Unknown author not mentioned in text:

"HTML is the lingua franca of the Net. It's a simple, universal mark-up language that allows Web publishers to create complex pages of text and images that can be viewed by anyone else on the Web, regardless of what kind of computer or browser is being used" ("Intro to HTML," 2003)

Unknown author mentioned in text:

According to the site "Intro to HTML," (2003) "HTML is the lingua franca of the Net. It's a simple, universal mark-up language that allows Web publishers to create complex pages of text and images that can be viewed by anyone else on the Web, regardless of what kind of computer or browser is being used"

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Works Cited For Examples:

DeRose, J., Elfriede F., & Haskins, E. V. (2003). Pop (Up) Goes the Blind Date: Supertextual Constraints on Reality Television. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 27(2) 171-189.

Intro to HTML. HTML Basics. (1999, February). Retrieved September 10, 2003, from http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/53/ index0a.html?tw=authoring.

Street, R. L. (2002). Gender Differences in Health Care Provider-Patient Communication: are They Due to Style, Stereotypes, or accommodation?. Patient Education and Counseling. 48(3), 201-206. Retrieved September 10, 2003 from Academic Search Premier.

For more extensive information on APA style, consult the print version of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual located in the Information Commons Reference, call# BF76.7 .P83 2001.

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