What is APA Style?

You've probably seen a lot of freelance job listings that state that the writer must know "APA style." If you don't know what that means, I'm here to help!

American Psychological Association (APA) is the most commonly used citation style for social science term papers and research papers according to Purdue University Online Writing Lab. This citation style is relatively simple to learn and write on a bibliography page.

APA Format for Citations

The proper page format for the bibliography or citation page of a APA style paper is to use a hanging indent on the first line of the citation and to hit the keyboard’s “enter” button after each citation.

Writing an APA Citation of Print Media

In an APA citation the writer must write all of the information in a certain order with certain punctuation. This is how a writer can achieve proper APA citations:

The writer should write the author’s last name first, followed by an initial for the first name and last and end the name with a comma.

If there is a second author the writer adds an “&” sign and write the second author’s name like the first’s.

 Once all of the author’s names are written down, the writer should end with a period. This is how the citations would look so far: Doe, J. P., & Zam, M.

1. Then the writer should add the year the publication was published in parentheses.
2. The writer should then add the article or book’s name and capitalize only first word and proper nouns, ending the title name with a period. If the name is a title of a book, the title should be italicized.
3. Last, the writer adds the name of the journal or magazine, the volume, or issue number and the page number(s). For example a magazine would look like this: Ladies Home Journal, 40, 56‐60. For a book, write the city and two-letter state abbreviation of the publisher, a colon and the publisher’s name followed by a period. A book citation would look like this: New York, NY: XYZ Press. The completed citation would look like this: Doe, J. P., & Zam, M. (2009) Great world we live in. New York, NY: XYZ Press

Citing Web Media in APA Style

Citing an online source is a little different than citing print media. Instead of citing a page number, the writer adds the web address to the citation. Here is how the citation should look:

Author’s name, & other’s author’s name, . (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Site in italics, Volume number or issue number, if there is one. Retrieved from http://www.webaddress.com

These guidelines are all a writer needs to write an APA style citations that will garner a good grade.