How to Use the APA Style for Citing Journals

The American Psychological Association (APA) created a style for citing references for scholarly, peer-reviewed works. The citation style assures that everyone who uses the APA format provides the same bibliographic information for materials used in writing articles, dissertations, books and school papers. Here's how to use the APA citation style for a journal article in both its print and online forms.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Cite a source within your text by stating the author's name followed the date the article was published in parentheses. For example:

   Jefferson (2003) wrote about the....

   If the author's name does not appear as part of the sentence, place both the name and the date, separated by a comma, in parentheses. For example:

   This study was conducted at Harvard University (Jefferson, 2003).

   The period is placed outside of the parentheses.

2. If a source has multiple authors, cite all the authors' names up to 5 for the first in-text citation. For the next reference to that work, use only the first author's name followed by et al. If there are 6 or more authors, use only the first author's s name followed by et al.

3. Cite a quotation from a source by adding a page number to the reference. For example:

   "I oversaw the study conducted at Harvard University" (Jefferson, 2003, p. 45).

   Some electronic sources do not have page numbers, so use the abbreviation para, meaning paragraph, and the paragraph number, as in:

   "I oversaw the study conducted at Harvard University" (Jefferson, 2003, para. 4)

4. Create a reference section at the conclusion of your paper. The APA reference format for a journal article is:

   Jefferson, B., (2003). Title of the article. Title of periodical, volume number, page numbers.

   If the article has multiple authors, all of the authors are named up to 6. The seventh author and beyond are cited as et al. Use commas to separate authors names. The title of the article is typed in Roman letters with only the first word capitalized. The title of the periodical is italicized with all the main words capitalized. The volume number follows the periodical title. Do not use the abbreviation vol., but only the number. Another comma follows the volume number. Then list the article's start and ending page numbers in the journal.

5. Adjust the reference format if the journal article was retrieved from an online database.

   Jefferson, B., (2003). Title of the article. Title of periodical, volume number, page or paragraph numbers. Retrieved month day, year, from website address.

Resources

• APA Citation Style Web Site.