APA Referencing What You Need to Know

APA Referencing What You Need to Know APA Referencing: What You Need to Know Although produced by the American Psychological Association, APA referencing is now used to cite sources in a variety of academic fields (not just the social sciences). Knowing the basics of APA referencing is therefore important for any college student. In today’s post, we run through a few important facts about APA referencing, including its background and the format you should use for in-text citations. What is APA Style? APA style and APA referencing are set out in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which covers various elements of style and formatting as well as citing sources. First published in 1974, the APA manual is designed to ensure that academic writers communicate â€Å"with a minimum of distraction and a maximum of precision.† The APA’s simple-but-clear referencing system is part of this. APA Citations APA referencing uses parenthetical citations, meaning basic source information is provided in the main body of your document. For the majority of source types, APA citations require you to give an author surname and year of publication (along with relevant page numbers if you’re quoting a source directly): Ciabatta is â€Å"one of the most famous Italian breads† (D’Acampo, 2011, p. 22). Note that the name, year and page number are separated by commas in APA citations; it’s also important to remember that the page number is preceded by â€Å"p.† in these citations. The format changes a little when the author is named in the text. In these cases, the year of publication is given immediately after the name, but any page numbers still appear after the quoted text: D’Acampo (2011) claims that â€Å"Tuscan bread is well known for being low in salt† (p. 33). APA Reference Lists In addition to in-text citations, APA referencing requires all sources to be listed with full publication information at the end of your document. This reference list should: List all sources cited in your document (do not list sources you haven’t cited) Invert the names of authors (surname first, followed by initials) Order sources alphabetically by author surname List multiple works by the same author chronologically, earliest first Italicize all journal and book titles Use a half-inch hanging indent for each line after the first in an entry Provide all names of authors for any text with up to seven authors; for texts with more than seven authors, simply list the first six then add the final author after an ellipsis Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in titles and subtitles The precise information required for each source varies depending on format but will generally include details about the author(s), title and publisher. The D’Acampo book cited above, for instance, would appear in the reference list as: D’Acampo, G. (2011). Italian home baking. London: Kyle Books. And after finishing your reference list, why not treat yourself to a nice ciabatta?