How to Document Sources in APA Style

Many social sciences classes at Honolulu Community

College use the American Psychological Association (APA)
style for citations. This guide provides frequently cited
sources. For those not included here, please consult the
Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association. Refer to Chapter 4.16, Elements and
Examples of Reference in APA Style, pp. 231-281, for
examples.

Publication Manual of the American Psychological

Association, 5th edition
Call number: BF76.7 .P83 2001

Visit the APA style web site at http://www.apastyle.org

I. References

References provide the information necessary for a reader to locate and

retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Your reference list should
appear at the end of your paper. It should begin on a separate page from the
text of the essay under the label References (with no quotation marks,
underlining, etc.), centered at the top of the page.

Basic Rules

 Author's names are inverted. Begin with last name, followed by a

comma, then by middle and first initials. Example: Smith, M. F. Use
"&" instead of "and" when listing multiple authors. Example: Calfee,
R. C., & Valencia, R. R.

 Date: The publication date should be enclosed in parentheses.

Example: (1998)

 Title: Italicize titles of books and periodicals. Capitalize only the first
word of a title and subtitle of a work. Close with a final period.
Example: Curing the crisis: Options for America's health care.

 Location: You should always list the city, but you should also include
the state abbreviation if the city is not well known for publishing. You
can omit state for the following cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago,
Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco . Place a
colon (:) after location. Example: Springfield, MA:

 Publisher (for books): Use the full name of the publisher, but drop
Co., Inc., Publishers, etc. Retain Books or Press. Close with a period.
Example: Merriam-Webster.

 Reference list must be double-spaced. All lines after the first line of
 each entry should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. �
The reference list should be alphabetized by authors' last names. � If
you have more than one work by the same author, order them by
publication date, oldest to newest. � If no author is given for a
particular source, alphabetize using the title of the work.

BOOKS - General Format

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Book title. Location: Publisher.

One Author

Reagan, M. D. (1992). Curing the crisis: Options for America's health care.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Two Authors

Cohen, L. G., & Spenciner, L. J. (1994). Assessment of young children.

White

Plains, NY: Longman.

Three to Six Authors

Pratkanis, A. R., Brecker, S. J., & Greenwald, A. G. (1989). Attitude

structure and

function. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

 If a book has more than six authors, after giving the sixth author's name
and initial, use et al. (not italicized and with a period after "al") to
indicate the remaining authors of the book.

Edited Book

Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: Psychological

interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 For a book with just one editor, use (Ed.).

Book with an Author and an Editor

Welty, E. (1994). A writer's eye: Collected book reviews (P. A. McHaney,

Ed.).

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Chapter from a Book

Rubenstein, J. P. (1967). The effect of television violence on small children.

In B. F. Kane (Ed.), Television and juvenile psychological

development

(pp. 112-134). New York: American Psychological Society.

No Author or Editor

Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield,

MA:

Merriam-Webster.

Encyclopedia Article

Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In The new encyclopedia Britannica

(Vol. 26,

pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

PERIODICALS - General Format

Author, A. A. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of periodical,
volume number, pages.

 Date of publication: Include year of publication, add month and day of

publication for daily, weekly, or monthly publications. Enclose in
parentheses.

 Title of article: Do not italicize the title of article or place quotation

marks around it.

 Title of periodical: Include the full periodical title, using upper and
lowercase letters. Italicize the name of the periodical and the volume
number, if any.

 Volume number: Give the volume number of journals, magazines, and

newsletters. Do not use "Vol." before the number.

 Pages:

1. Give the page numbers for the whole article rather than the first page.
Example: 204-232.
2. Only use the abbreviations before page numbers from newspapers. Use
"p." for one page (Example: p. A1) and "pp." for more than one page
(Example: pp. A1, A6).
3. For journal and magazine articles, just include the page numbers with
 no abbreviation or label. Example: 28-31.

Journal Articles

Saywitz, K. J., Mannarino, A. P., Berliner, L., & Cohen, J. A. (2000).

Treatment for

sexually abused children and adolescents. American Psychologist,

55,

1040-1049.

 If, and only if, each issue of a journal begins on page 1, give the issue
number in parentheses immediately after the volume number. See
example below.

Klimoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in
organizations.

Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 45(2), 10-

36.

Magazine Articles

Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Beyond the melting pot. Time, 135, 28-
31.

Newspaper Articles

Schwartz, J. (1993, September 30). Obesity affects economic, social

status. The

Washington Post, pp. A1, A4.

 If an article appears on discontinuous pages, give all page numbers, and

separate the numbers with a comma. Example: pp. B1, B3, B5-7.

INTERNET SOURCES - General Formats

Article from a Database

Author, A. A. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Periodical,

volume

number (issue number), pages. Retrieved month date, year, from

Database

name.

Online Document
Author, A. A. (Date of publication). Title of article. Retrieved month date,
year,

from http://web address

Because the Internet is constantly changing, it is important that you give the
uniform resource locator (URL) of the Internet resource and the date you
accessed it. Provide as much identifying information as possible. The APA
citation will include as many of the following elements in the order listed. For
some Web sites you may only have a title, a date of access and an address to
cite.

 Author(s) last name and initials, if available. If not available, start

with the title.

 Date of publication, in parentheses, if available. The date should be

expressed as either a year, a year and a month, or a year, month and
date depending on what information is available from the Web site.

 Title of work, italicized. If the source is a periodical article, include the

title of the article (not italicized), and then the name of the periodical,
italicized, followed by a volume number, also italicized, if available.
Use "headline" style capitalization for name of the periodical. This
means that the first letter of each important word should be capitalized.
Example: U.S. News & World Report

 Pagination information, if available. More often than not, this will

NOT be available for Web sites.

 Retrieval information includes the date of retrieval as well as the

unique URL of a Web site. Avoid dividing the URL at the end of a line.
If absolutely necessary, divide it at a slash (/) or before a period.
Example: Retrieved July 30, 2002, from http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/
library

 If the source is from a library-based electronic resource the retrieval

information will include the date of retrieval and the proper name of the
database. Example: Retrieved August 22, 2002, from General
Reference Center database.

Articles from Library Electronic Databases

White, B. (2002, July 30). Stocks make more big gains. The Washington
Post,

p. A1. Retrieved August 1, 2002, from NewsBank database.

Geiger, H. J. (2001, May). Terrorism, biological weapons, and bonanzas:

Assessing
 the real threat to public health. American Journal of Public Health,
91,

708-709. Retrieved August 1, 2002, from Academic Search Premier

database.

Electronic Newspaper Article

Hilts, P. J. (1999, February 16). In forecasting their emotions, most people

flunk

out. New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2000, from

http://www.nytimes.com

Document with Author and Date

Murray, J. P. Children and television violence. (1995). Retrieved July 19,

2001,

from http://www.ksu.edu/humec/kulaw.htm

Document with No Author, No Date

GVU's 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000, from

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1997-10/

 Begin with the title of the document if there is no author

 n.d. = no date

E-mail

 E-mail sent from one individual to another should be cited as a

communication (see example for personal communications)

AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA:
Formats vary for citing audiovisual media. Consult pp. 266-268 of the
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition
for samples of citation format.

Motion Picture or Videotape

Scorsese, M. (Producer), & Lonergan, K. (Writer/Director). (2000). You can

Count

on me [Motion picture]. United State: Paramount Pictures.

Archer, D. (Writer/Director). (1992). A world of gestures: Cultural and

nonverbal
 communication [Videotape]. Berkeley: University of California
Extension

Media Center.

Radio or Television Program

Crystal L. (Executive Producer). (1993, October 11). The MacNeil/Lehrer

news hour

[Television broadcast]. New York and Washington, DC: Public

Broadcasting

Service.

II. Quotations in Text

When you quote, summarize, or use the ideas from another source, you should
list the author's last name, followed by a comma, then by publication year in
parentheses in your text. Indicate the page when citing a specific part of a
source. Always give page numbers for quotations.

Example:

A traumatic response frequently entails a "delayed, uncontrolled

repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive
phenomena" (Caruth, 1996, p.11)

One work by one author

(Walker, 2000)

More than one author with the same last name

(H. James, 1878); (W. James, 1880)

Two or more works in the same parentheses

(Fussel, 1975; Caruth, 1996; Showalter, 1997)

Six or more authors

(Smith et al, 1998)

If the source has no known author, use the title

 Cite the first few words of the title and the year. Use double quotation
marks around the title of article or chapter

Full Title: "California Cigarette Tax Deters Smokers"

 Citation: ("California," 1999)

 Italicize the title of a periodical, book, or report.

the book College Bound Seniors (1979)

Specific part of a source

(Cheek & Buss, 1981, p. 332)

(Jones, 1995, chap. 2)

Personal communications (e-mail, personal interviews, and telephone

conversations, etc.)

Source: email message from John Smith

Citation: (J. Smith, personal communication, May 16, 1998)

 Personal communication is not available to your readers. Cite it in text

only. Do not include it in the reference list. Give the initials as well as
the surname of the communicator, and provide as exact date as
possible.

A general reference to a web site

Source: Honolulu Community College Library web site

Citation: (http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/library)