APA Referencing Style

APA Referencing Style

Introduction

APA is a set of rules for referencing and formatting rules, created by the American Psychological Association. Referencing in APA has two parts: the citation within the text and the reference list at the end of the paper. APA referencing style is an author-date style, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) name and year of publication. Only the surname is followed by a comma and the year of publication. Page, chapter or section numbers are also included.The reference list gives full details of a text  at the end of the document.

In-text Citation

The in-text citation is a citation within the text. It consists of three elements, namely author(s) last name, year of publication, and page number. To format these elements, two formats are used. First, the elements are put in a parentheses at the end of the sentence. Second, the author(s) name and year of publication used in the sentence and page number placed at the end. For short quotations, the quotation is enclosed by inverted commas, whereas for long quotations, the quotation is indented 0.5″ hanging, and no inverted commas are used.

Citing Author(s)

Authors of the sources used in a document need acknowldegement as owners of the text.  For two authors, their surnames are used and separated by “and.” More than two authors cited for the first time, all their surnames are written separated by commas. In subsequent citations, only the first author’s surname is included, followed by “et al.” in the signal phrase or parentheses. The names of groups that serve as authors are usually written in full every time they appear in-text citation. If two or more sources have similar information, the authors are cited alphabetically and separated by a semicolon.

Reference List

All references or information sources cited in the document are listed in a separate reference list. The sources should be listed alphabetically according to author’s last name. Some of the references sources include

 Books

Elements included in the reference list for books are authors, year of publication, full title of the book, book edition, and publisher. Book titles are in italics

Journal

Elements included in the reference list for journals are: author, year of publication, article title, journal name, volume, page number, DOI

Website

Features included in the reference list for websites are: author, year of publication, webpage title, date of retrieval from the website, URL for the website.

Articles in periodicals, magazines, and newspapers

Elements included in the reference list for periodicals, magazines, and newspapers are: author, year of publication, title of the article, title , volume number (issue number), page number.

Conclusion

APA referencing style is a formatting and referencing guideline used in academic writing that creates consistency in text and acknowledges authors of information.

Works Cited

Bryan, Sharon. “Library Guides: APA Referencing Guide (Beta): Reference list.” (2019).

American Psychological Association. Publication manual. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1983.