APA Format Tips and Tricks

What is it?

  American Psychological Association Format

Why Do you need it?

  This will help you cite works used within a research paper and on a reference page at the end.  This way you can give proper credit to the original sources of your research.

Reference Page Helpful Hints:

      Cite your references in your paper to help readers easily locate them on your reference page.

      Title your page “References” and center it on the top of the page.

      Arrange your citations in alphabetical order.

      Double space your reference list.

      Use Italics for titles of books, journals or videos.

      Keep article titles and chapter titles in plain text.  DO NOT format them.

      Use page numbers only if you have pages from a specific chapter or article.

Hints for handling citation of Online resources:

      Follow the basic format as you would for print materials – author, date, title and publication info.

      The author of your document may be an organization rather than one person.  This is OK.

      Two dates needed – First the date the information was published.  Then you will also add a date of retrieval for when you found the information cited.

      Include the URL of the source.

      Include the specific parts of the web document if appropriate.

Example of APA cited reference:

Altrichter, H., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (2003) The Written Survey. In Teachers investigate their work: An introduction of the methods of action research, (p. 110-114). London: Routledge.