SPE 103 - Sfikas/Sanderson - Fall 2024

APA is a formatting style for the American Psychological Association and its professional publications. APA standardizes formatting for both the writing and citations in order to maintain consistency in cited sources and help prevent plagiarism. It is the citation style commonly used by the social sciences. In an APA formatted paper:

• All text should be double-spaced
• Use one-inch margins on all sides
• All paragraphs in the body are indented
• Make sure that the title is centered on the page with your name and school/institution underneath
• Use 12-point font throughout
• All pages should be numbered in the upper right hand corner
• The manual recommends using one space after most punctuation marks
• A shortened version of the title (“running head”) should be placed in the upper left hand corner

What do I include in a citation?

APA requires as much of the following information as possible:
      Author's name
      Date of publication or update
      Title of the source
      URL   or
      DOI - Digital Object Identifier  - for online newspaper, magazine or journal articles.

A URL or web address is not enough information for a citation in any paper or project.
Sometimes a URL will lead to a dead link so more details about your source are needed.  

Here are examples of a book citation in

APA7:

End text reference:

English, D. (2010). How to see a work of art in total darkness. MIT Press.

In text citation:

(English, 2010)

Or a Collection of Essays

APA7:

End text reference:

Print

Last name, Initial(s). (Ed.). (Year). Title (ed.). Publisher.

Example:
Wu, D. (Ed.). (2012). Romanticism: An anthology (4th ed.). Blackwell.

Online

Last name, Initial(s). (Ed.). (Year). Title (ed.). Publisher. DOI

In text citation:

Example:
According to Wu (2012)....
OR
...(Wu, 2012).​​​​​​​