APA Style Bibliographies
APA—or American Psychological Association—style is the format you will most likely be asked to use when writing papers for classes that are in science or social science departments, such as biology, physics, psychology, or human nutrition, just to name a few. Yesterday, we talked about how to properly notate in-text citations. Today, in part two of our three part series, we will be discussing how to format a bibliography in APA style.
A bibliography is the place where you list your references at the end of your paper. This is done so that your reader can quickly find your source material. It is important that you format this page correctly, as it is often a source of point deductions in many classes. Some general guidelines:
- Your references page needs to be an entirely new page that is placed after your paper
- Label your page REFERENCES bold and centered at the top of your page
- Your list should follow the authors’ last names alphabetically
- Make sure you include the year of your publication
- The second line of your reference should be indented
- Journal names and book titles should be italicized; the actual name of the article should be written in plain text.
Here’s an example of the proper citation of a journal article:
Doe, John. (2007). Learning how to write a bibliography. The Nameless Journal, 17, 500.
Here’s an example of the proper citation of a book:
Doe, John. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.
Note where the periods and italics are in the text. This is not incidental! You must format your references this way.
Tomorrow, we’ll be discussing overall formatting of your paper under APA guidelines!
