Writing Mechanics

Using APA Style

taken from Bank Street College Graduate School Writer's Handbook

The following explanations from the American Psychological Association will guide you in setting up bibliographies, reference lists, and citations in the text of your work. If you are accustomed to using another style sheet, you will find some striking differences between APA style and the others with which you may be familiar. Most notably, in the APA style sheet, capitalization in the title of an article or of a book follows the same rules as capitalization in a common sentence. According to most other style sheets, each important rule in any title should be capitalized. In APA style, capitalization of each important word applies only to titles of journals.

The following definitions are in keeping with APA style:

A reference list appears on a separate page at the end of an article. Titled "References," it documents books and articles actually used in the preparation of an article or essay and provides the information necessary to identify and retrieve each source. The writer should include only the sources that were used in the research and preparation of the article.

A bibliography cites works for background or for further reading. Often a bibliography is annotated; that is, it includes a brief objective description of the article or book.

A reference citation in text, in preference to footnotes, briefly identifies the source of information for readers, and enables readers to locate the source in the alphabetical reference list at the end of the article.

Content footnotes are discouraged because they are distracting to the reader, and because important information merits inclusion in the text.

Citing References in the Body of the Paper *

Each time you quote a source directly, paraphrase an idea, or refer to something that another person said or wrote, identify the original source by inserting the author's last name and the date within the text of your paper. Each source you cite must also appear in the reference list at the end of your paper.

These arguments against standardized education (Duckworth, 1986) explore science as a process of discovery.

Give page numbers for direct quotations. Note that any sentence punctuation comes after the closing parenthesis.

As Dewey (1938) noted, the educational continuum was united by this "connectedness in growth" (p.75).

If the author's name is used in the text, only the date needs to be inside parentheses. When both the author and the date are used in the citation, separate them with a comma. If the author's last name and the date both happen to appear in the text, there is no need to give further reference.

Duckworth (1986) discussed this.

In 1986, Duckworth arguedÐ'...

You need include the year only once when referring to a particular study within a paragraph as long as the study will not be confused with other studies.

In her study of how individuals learn about density, Duckworth (1986) makes a critical caseÐ'...

Duckworth also foundÐ'...

When referring to a particular part of a source, give the page number, chapter, figure, or table at the appropriate place in the text. Abbreviate page and chapter.

(Meyers & Jackson, 1991, p.78)

(Johnson, 1990, chap. 5)

When a work has more than two authors and fewer than six, cite all the authors the first time the reference occurs; subsequently, only the last name of the first author followed by "et al." and the year. If there are six or more authors, cite only the first author and replace the rest with the abbreviation "et al."

Marra, Jacobson, Hardy, Krance, and Center (1982)Ð'...[first citation]

Marra et al. (1982)Ð'...[subsequent citations]

When citing two authors in the text, join their names by the word "and." In parenthetical material, in tables, and in the reference list, join the names by an ampersand (&):

As Keisel and Drapewski (1990) demonstratedÐ'...

As has been shown (Keisel & Drapewski, 1990)Ð'...

If you are referring to a source cited by another author, use the following form:

Ainsworth's study (cited in Kagan, 1984) demonstratedÐ'...

Note: Be sure to list Kagan's work, not Ainsworth's, in your reference list, since you found the information in Kagan.

Reference Lists and Bibliographies

General Style Preferences

List all sources alphabetically by the author's last name. The first line of a bibliography or reference list is flush with the left margin; all subsequent lines are indented 3 spaces.

Authors

List the author's last name first, comma, then the author's initial(s). With two or more authors, separate each author's name with a comma and use an ampersand (&) before the last author. If the work has no author, list the title first. Write the full name of a corporate author.

Date of publication

Give the year the work was copyrighted.

Periodicals

Periodical example:

Radens, E.C., & Schwimmer, S. (1990). Thinking together: The value of discussion in the five-year-old's classroom. Thought and Practice: The Journal of the Graduate School of Bank Street College of Education, 2(2), 16-26.

Article title

The title is written as a sentence would be: only the first word is capitalized, as are any proper names and any word following a colon. The title has no quotation marks around it, nor is it italicized (or underlined):

Looking beyond test scores: An approach to reading assessment.