BK Writing Lab

 

Note: Before continuing you should verify that your instructor wants you to cite in APA format. All papers written for BK English Department classes should be using MLA style citation, not APA.

General APA Formatting Rules

The Basics:

APA is an acronym for American Psychological Association. The APA citation style is not used only by psychologists but also by researchers working in the fields of education, sociology, economics, criminal justice, and business.

So what does an APA paper look like? First, the paper must be double-spaced and it should have 1-inch margins in each direction (this is the default setting in most word processors). 

As for font, you do not necessarily have to use Times New Roman (as you do for MLA), but your selected font should be clear, readable, and serious. We recommend Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or Georgia. The size of your font will vary depending on what you choose, but you generally want to use a 10, 11, or 12-point font. Some fonts will look too small in 10-point font, so make sure that your choice can be read easily; whatever you pick should be close in overall size to 12-point Times New Roman.

Beginning with the 7th edition of the APA citation style (APA 7), student papers no longer require a complete page header (sometimes called the "running head") at the top of each page. Student papers only require a page number in the header (top right corner).

Every professional APA paper must have the following four components: 1. a title page, 2. an abstract, 3. the main body of the paper, and 4. references. Student papers often do not require an abstract but you should check with your instructor before submitting your paper.

 

1. The Title Page:

You should begin your paper with a title page that has seven pieces of information: the paper's title, your name as the author, the name of the academic department and institution, the name and number of the course, the course instructor's name, the assignment due date, and the page number in the top right-hand corner.

1. Your title should not be written in all caps, but it should be bold and centered in the top half of the first page of the paper.

2. Underneath your title, write your full name using an initial for your middle name. Do not use bold for your name.

3. On the next line, write the name of the academic department -- for example, Department of English or Department of Mathematics. After the name of the department, you should include the name of the institution: Bishop Kenny. Again, do not use bold, which should only be included for the first line (the title).

4. Underneath the department and institution, write the number and name of the course. For example, ENG 103: English IV Honors. Please note that you can find the course number on Canvas. Do not use bold.

5. On the next line, write the name of the course instructor. Make sure it's spelled correctly and includes the correct title. If the instructor has a doctorate degree, make sure that you write "Dr." in front of their name. Again, no bold.

6. Underneath the instructor's name, write the full date that the paper is due. Make sure you include the right date and not the date you started working on the paper, which is a common mistake students make. Remember, no bold.

7. The page number must be in the top right-hand corner of the page, and it should not be bold. Student papers do not require the paper title in the header. 

 

2. An abstract:

Note: Student papers often do not require an abstract. Check with your instructor to see if he/she wants you to include one with your paper.

If you are going to include an abstract with your paper, you can only write it after the rest of the paper is complete.

The abstract should get its own page, and it should be the only content on its page. Remember, student papers technically do not require a header, which is a change from prior versions of APA.

At the top of the page, write the word Abstract with a capital 'a.' Center and bold this word only.

Underneath where you have written Abstract, compose a brief summary of your paper. Typically you want your abstract to be 250 words or fewer. 

In your abstract, you should identify your topic of research, your primary question/inquiry/problem, your method(s), your findings/results, your interpretation of your findings/results, and your final conclusions. If your paper involved an experiment with participants, you should also mention that in the abstract.

Do not indent the first line of your abstract and make sure that you only write a single paragraph (again, of 250 words or fewer).

Some writers choose to include a list of keywords underneath their abstract. If you are going to include keywords, indent a new line underneath your abstract and italicize the capitalized word Keywords followed by a colon (:).

Example: 

     Keywords: Piaget, cognitive development, Lacan, mirror stage, developmental psychology

 

3. The Body of the Paper:

Headings within the paper should be bold and centered, although subheadings within a section, while still bold, should not be centered. 

The body/introduction of the paper should begin immediately under the boldface title of the paper, not to be confused with the separate title page at the beginning. Do not create a heading titled "Introduction."

In-Text Citation

When citing sources in the APA format, you should use author-date in-text citation. This means that for every citation, you should give the last name of the author, and the year of publication. Every citation should have a full corresponding entry in the References section at the end of your paper (see below).

Beyond those basic requirements, the specific way in which you offer the author and date will vary depending on the situation.

When you are citing specific text with a page number, you should provide the page number in parentheses after the citation (i.e., after the quoted text). In front of the page number, abbreviate "page" by writing "p.". If you are citing a range of pages, employ a mid-sized dash, commonly referred to as the "en dash" (–). Note that this is not the same as the hyphen (which is the same as the minus/subtraction sign) or the "em dash" (the long dash, i.e. —). 

Example: Sprinker (1998) suggests that "[t]he answer lies in the metaphor Proust has carefully chosen to represent this relationship" (p. 152).

When you are not citing a specific page number, you only need to give the author's name and the publication year. 

Example: Sprinker (1998) shows that Proust's In Search of Lost Time is a tacit commentary on the Third Republic's class struggles.

You are not required to include this information at the end of your sentence, as you do for MLA. For example, if you mention an author early in a sentence, you should put the publication year in parentheses immediately after the author's name, instead of at the end of the sentence. 

Footnotes

APA Citation Style permits but does not require the use of footnotes. If you are going to use footnotes in your paper, you should do so in order to make your text more complete. 

Footnotes should be short and focused, otherwise, the material should probably be contained in the main body of the paper. You should also ensure that your footnotes include pertinent information; if the connection between the content of a footnote and your main paper is obscure, you should probably reconsider including the footnote as it might seem to your reader to be too off-topic.

 

4. References:

APA guidelines specify that you use the term "References" for your full list of cited materials at the end of your document. This means that you should not use the terms "Works Cited" and "Bibliography."

All sources that are cited in the paper must have a corresponding entry in your References. You never include something in your paper that is not mentioned in your list of References, nor do you ever include something in your References that is not cited in the paper. 

Your list of sources should be alphabetized according to the last name of the (primary) author, which is also the first piece of information in each citation. Each entry should have a hanging indent, which means that any line after the first should be indented by a half-inch.

Citing Research Articles

Each conventional research article will follow this general citation format:

Last name, First Initial. Second Initial (if any). (Year of publication). Name of article. Name of journal, Vol(No.), page-page. DOI (if any).

Note: On this webpage, it is not possible to implement a hanging indent. Make sure that you include a hanging indent in your own paper!

If you are familiar with MLA-style citation, you will notice that this is a bit different. For example, you do not write out the full name of the author with APA; instead, you just write the first and middle names as initials. If the article does not provide the middle name of the author, you can skip over it and just include the first initial (for the author's first name).

Second, the date goes in a completely different position, after the author but before the article title. 

Third, you do not include the title of the article in quotation marks.

Fourth, with APA you should capitalize only the first word of the source title, any proper nouns in the title, and the first word of the subtitle (after the colon). Often this confuses student writers.

Example: The elementary forms of the religious life

Example 2: A guide to English literature

Example 3: Religion and the body: Rematerializing the human body in the social sciences of religion.

Notice that in the second example, the word 'English' remains capitalized since it is a proper noun. You would follow the same principle in the following title:

Example 4: The great Gatsby

You might think that this looks a bit odd and maybe even incorrect, but according to APA rules, this is exactly what the title should look like.

Example 5: McGuire, M.B. (1990). Religion and the body: Rematerializing the human body in the social sciences of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29(3), 283-296.

Note that this citation lacks a DOI (digital object identifier -- essentially a permanent URL that will not move); this source was viewed as a hard copy in a university lobby. Let's look at another example with a DOI:

Example 6: Sallis, J. (1967). The problem of judgment in Husserl's later thought. Philosophical Logic 16, 129-152. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3497-5_10

This example is much like the other, except for the fact that here we have a DOI for the entry. Make sure that you do not include a period at the end of the DOI, otherwise, your readers might have difficulty getting the link to open in a web browser. You will also notice that this journal has a volume (16) but not a specific number/issue. This often happens with journals that only release content once a year. 

Citing Books

When you cite a book or scholarly monograph you should follow this general citation format:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Example: O'Malley, J.W. (2014). The Jesuits: A history from Ignatius to the present. Sheed & Ward.

Note: "Jesuits" and "Ignatius" are only capitalized here because they are proper nouns!

Here is what to do when your book has more than one author:

Last name 1., First initial. Second initial. (if any), & Last name 2, First Initial. Second Initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Example: Bennett, A. & Royle, N. (2004). An introduction to literature, criticism and theory (3rd ed.). Pearson.

What if your book does not have an author but it does have an editor? Follow this guide:

Editor last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

If you are citing a revised edition of a book, you will need a little more information, like this:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Example: Hock, R.R. (2009). Forty studies that changed psychology: Explorations into the history of psychological research (6th ed.). Pearson.

Often a scholarly book has an editor. In that case, you should follow this format:

Last name, First intial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any) (E.E. Editor, Ed.). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Conrad, J. (2006). Heart of darkness: Norton critical edition. (P. B. Armstrong, Ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.

If you need to cite a single chapter or article in a book, follow this format:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any). Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Note: If there are two editors, use the ampersand (&) instead of writing the word 'and.'

Example: Achebe, C. (2006). An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of darkness. In P.B. Armstrong (Ed.), Heart of darkness: Norton critical edition. W.W. Norton & Company.

What about a translation? This is the model:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capitalize subtitle (if any) (Translator first initial. Translator second initial (if any). Translator last name,  Name of Publisher. DOI (if any).

Schoof, T.M. (1970). A survey of Catholic theology 1800-1970 (N.D. Smith, Trans.). Paulist Newman Press. (Original work published 1968)

Citing Electronic Sources

Preliminary note: Many webpages lack a publication date. In the event that you cannot find a publication date, indicate "Date unknown." You will see several examples like this below.

Citing a page on a website:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication, month day). Title of webpage. Name of website. URL

Lupack, A. (Date uknown). Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone. The Camelot Project. https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/theme/Excalibur-and-sword-in-the-stone

Often webpages lack an author. If the author is an organization, follow this format:

Name of group. (Year of publication, month day). Title of webpage. Name of website. URL

If there is no author at all, then you want to use this model:

Title of webpage. (Year of publication, month day). Name of website. Retrieved month day, year, from URL.

Note: You want to include the date you accessed the information in case any of it changes, which is more likely with pages that lack a designated author.

Example: Gaheris. (Date unknown). Nightbringer. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from  http://nightbringer.se/nightbringer/a_gaheris.html

Citing a news article from a website:

Last name, First initial. Second initial (if any). (Year of publication, month day). Title of article. Title of news source. URL

Example: Carroll, R. (2001, September 15). Tuscany's Excalibur is the real thing, say scientists. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/16/rorycarroll.theobserver

If you have any questions, send us an email at bkwritinglab@bishopkennyhs.org!

Image Credit: Citation by Alice Design from the Noun Project