Principles and practices of APA citation formatting

¶ … Learning Exercise

The style of the American Psychological Association (APA) is the style of choice for writers, editors, students, and educators in the social and behavioral sciences. The forward to the 6th edition of the Publication Manual cites the benefits of using a uniform style. The purpose of this lecture is to provide instruction to format in-text citations and reference page information for articles with one, two and multiple authors.

When citing the work of one author in-text, use the author -- date method as follows:

Lastname (2011) found that among individuals surveyed

Seventy percent of individuals surveyed reported watching more than ten hours of television per week (Lastname, 2011).

In 2011, Lastname's survey of 1000 individuals showed that

Within a paragraph, do not include the year in subsequent nonparenthetical references, unless the year is needed to differentiate among other studies cited in the article. Include the year in all parenthetical citations:

Seventy percent of individuals reported watching more than ten hours of television per

week (Lastname, 2011). Lastname (2011) also reported

When citing the work of two authors in-text, the format is the same. When the names are included outside the parentheses, the connector "and" is used. Use an ampersand (&) when citing the authors -- date format parenthetically:

As Smith and Jones (2011) demonstrated as has been reported (Smith & Jones, 2011).

When a work has two authors, cite both names every time the reference occurs in the text. If there are three, four or five authors, cite all the first time. Subsequently include only the surname of the first author followed by "et al." In an actual citation, there are no quotation marks around "et al." And there is a period after al. If two references shorten to the same form, cite the surnames of the first two authors and as many of the remaining authors as needed to distinguish them. For example, both author lists shorten to the same form; Lastname, Smith, Jones, & Brown, 2011 and Lastname, Smith, Green, & Adams, 2011 both become Lastname et al., 2011. Distinguish them as follows:

Lastname, Smith, Jones, et al., 2011

Lastname, Smith, Green, et al., 2011

When a source has six or more authors, cite only the last name of the first author followed by et al. As above, distinguish authors that shorten to the same form by including as many subsequent authors as necessary. Separate each name by a comma, using the connector "and" unless the authors are listed parenthetically, in which case use an ampersand.