Home - APA Style Guide - Library at Seattle Central Community College

Anatomy of a Citation

Citation Anatomy jpg

In General

American Psychological Association (APA) Style is commonly used for academic writing in the social sciences, health and human services disciplines. These guidelines are based on the 6^th edition of the handbook, 2009.

Print out a PDF of the SCCC APA Style Guide

Most citations include 4 key elements: (1) author's name, (2) publication date, (3) title or source, and (4) publishing information.

Include the last name and first name initials only for authors.

Italicize titles, and capitalize only the first word (of the title and subtitle) for article and book titles.

Capitalize first letter of each word of a journal title.

Follow elements with a period and one space.

Double-space within and between each entry in the list of references.

When DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) are available, include them for both print and electronic sources.

Refer to the latest edition of the APA Publication Manual (at the Reference Desk) and/or the APA Style web site (http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html)about electronic reference formats.

Try NoodleBib, an online citation composing tool provided by the library (good for creating and organizing Reference lists).

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