APA Documentation Style

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In APA style, citations to original sources are given in the text of the paper. They follow the information drawn from the source(s), and are enclosed in parentheses. To illustrate the use of parenthetical citation, we have constructed two sample paragraphs and a set of guidelines.

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Sample paragraphs

To illustrate the widest possible range of references, these paragraphs have been densely loaded with fabricated citations. Don't try this in your own papers! Also, course papers are generally double-spaced.

Children's ability to understand the concept of health and the principles of healthy behavior has been found to develop in a systematic way (Eiser, Redpath, & Rogers, 1987). Piaget's theories of cognition about children's perceptions of the body and illnesses are widely cited in the literature (e.g., Bibace & Walsh, 1984; Conover, 1986, in press; Dorn & Ryerson, 1984; Reichenbach, 1988). The preschool child has cognitively developed to the preoperational stage, which involves both concrete operations and magical thinking (Eiser et al., 1987). Two-year-olds use symbols to learn (see discussion in Billingham, 1986), and children as young as 3 are able to engage in concrete causal thinking (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 1989). In addition, the preoperational child develops beliefs about illness that are based on phenomena in his or her environment (for a review, see "Understanding Early Years," 1985). An awareness of concepts such as contagion develops later (S. L. Dykes, 1958/1987; see also A. T. Dykes, 1983); however, Piaget (1962) insisted that gaining any conceptual knowledge depends on a child's level of experience (cited in Williamson, 1983).

Other theorists have argued that preschoolers may be capable of understanding more than Piaget has given them credit for (R. D. Donnely, personal communication, November 10, 1990).* For example, variations of the tests Piaget designed have been used to identify specific abilities of preschoolers (S. L. Dykes, 1958/1987). Results have failed to show that children of this age think only egocentrically (see Table 2). It has also been hypothesized that in conversations about health, young children "will consider the understanding of the person to whom they are speaking, e.g., 3-year-old vs. adult" (A. T. Dykes, 1983, p. 44). This hypothesis was supported by Swift (1985) and Palmer and Lewis (1987) who found that preschoolers were generally able (a) to discriminate between themselves and their environment and (b) to give concrete explanations for healthy behaviors.

*Nonrecoverable data (e.g., personal communication such as E-mail, memos, interview, lecture) are generally cited in text only and are not listed in references.

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Guidelines for parenthetical (in-text) references

Placement

Place citations within sentences and paragraphs so that it is clear which material has come from which sources. Use pronouns and transitions to help you indicate whether several sentences contain material from the same source or from different sources:

Symthe (1990) found that positioning influences ventilation. In his quasi- experimental study of 20 ICU patients, he used two methods to. . . However, his findings did not support the work of Karcher (1987) and Atley (1989) who used much larger samples to demonstrate that. . .

Two or more authors

When a work has a single author or two authors, cite their names and the date of publication whenever you refer to their work in the text. (Exception: Within a given paragraph, do not include the date after the initial citation unless you are citing other publications elsewhere in your paper by the same author(s).) Join two co-authors in the text with the word "and", but within parentheses use an ampersand (&).

If authors have the same surname, always include their initials in each citation.

When citing co-author groups of three to five authors, cite all names and the date in the initial citation, but only the first author followed by et al. and the date in subsequent citations.

For co-author groups of six or more authors, cite in the text only the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the date. If two or more six-author groups shorten to the same surname, cite the surnames of as many subsequent authors as needed to distinguish references.

No author

If a work has no author, use the first two or three words of the title (omitting a beginning article), and capitalize each word of your shortened version. Place the short title in quotation marks if it is an article or chapter, or underline it if it is a book or periodical. Substitute the short title for the name of the author. An article: ("Learned Helplessness," 1985). The full title appears alphabetically in the reference list (without quotation marks) in the author position.

When citing an edited work (a book, a report, a monograph) and that work has no author, the editor(s) assume the author position.

Multiple references

Alphabetize multiple references within parentheses and separate author groups with a semicolon. You may separate a major reference from others by inserting "see also" before remaining references, which appear alphabetically:

(Patel, 1990; see also Arndt, 1986; Turgel, 1992).

When selecting one or more authors to represent the work or findings of a large group of authors, inform the reader by including e.g. within the citation:

A large number of studies have shown that variations in brain waves are common (e.g., Engle, 1993a; Reuter, 1990; Trautman, 1987).

Punctuation

When an author-date citation appears at the end of a sentence, place the period after the parentheses. When an author-date citation appears mid-sentence, punctuation depends on the context.

Other guidelines

Indicate in the text when you are citing from a secondary source in one of the following ways: Place both authors in the same citation at the end of the sentence: (Smith, 1976, cited in Carrington, 1989); or cite them separately within the sentence: Smith (1976) formulated a theory about deviant behavior (cited in Carrington, 1989).

Use appropriate verbs to distinguish between empirical and nonempirical works: "Zuckerman (1989) compared two groups of. . ." (empirical) vs. "Basil (1991) wrote extensively about. . ." (nonempirical). Also inform the reader about background information: "For a review, see. . ." or "(see discussion in Ryan, 1990)."

When citing more than one article published by an author in the same year, repeat the year, but add a suffix to represent each article (Wilbourn, 1988a, 1988b). Suffixes are assigned according to the alphabetical order of the first major word in each title and also appear in the reference list, where the author's name is repeated for each article.

References List | Headings | Usage and Style | Formatting