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MMC NOTEBOOK - NOTE #D3: APA PUBLICATION FORMAT

Scholarly writing, as writing for other purposes, has a set of conventions and guidelines. These are set down in style manuals published by various persons and organizations. Scholarly, research and professional journals have guidelines for authors who wish to publish in them. Newspapers and popular periodicals often do also. College and university instructors may require that term papers and other work conform to a specific style manual. The bibliographies accompanying papers and assignments must be formatted by these standards. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 5th ed. (BF 76.7 .P82 2001 Ref.) is frequently recommended for papers. A copy is at the Reserve Desk and on the Reference Desk. It is necessary to consult the manual for the fine points of writing a paper, including tables and graphs. The basic formats for citing works within a paper and several of the common items included in cited literature (bibliographies and/or reference lists) are illustrated here.

PAPER ORGANIZATION
Most college papers are reviews of literature or position papers based on the literature. The paper, in effect, is meant to summarize and to teach about a specific topic or viewpoint. Typically a paper:

* states a problem
* summarizes past and current research
* discusses relationships, compares and contrasts or applies information to a problem.

There is a Word template available to help in laying out papers. Talk with the Reference Librarian about obtaining the APA Word Document template.

REFERENCE CITATIONS IN TEXT

When references are cited within the narrative, use the guidelines in sections 3.94 - 3.103 of the Publication Manual. The most common styles for parenthetical information are as follows:

Jones (1993) stated that...

Age was significant in a number of studies. (Smith and Pears, 1963; White, 1982; Zayres, 1989)

Many theories of language development appear in the literature (see discussion in Allen, 1992).

Jackson's statement that "the world is flat..." is not always laughable. (1999, p21)

CONVENTIONS
Writing should conform to the conventions of the APA style. Grammar and punctuation requirements are found in the Publication Manual. APA format does not use first names of authors and editors. Use initials.

CITED LITERATURE
A reference list is a list of the items cited in the body of the paper. Bibliographies may be items read in preparation but not cited specifically, or, a list of suggested items for further study. The APA on their website recommends hanging indentation for cited literature.

On the APAStyle.org website (an official American Psychological Association publication) italics are used to designate the parts of a citation which they show as underlined in the APA publication manual. Journals published by the APA use the italic style. This note uses italics because it is published on the WWW where underlining can be confusing. Use the style that your instructor requires.

As student papers are not being prepared for publication, the Manual states that instructor preference always takes precedence over the Manual and that instructions to use the Publication Manual should always be accompanied by specific teacher instructions. Ask your instructors for their preferences in such things as type of indentation, italicizing or underlining, and line spacing of cited works.

The first example below (print books, no author) is shown in the three indentation styles. Use the style preferred by your instructor. All other examples are not indented because this is a webpage and distortions often occur when indentations are inserted.

Print BOOKS
NO AUTHOR (paragraph indent)
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (1983). Washington, DC:American Psychological Association.

NO AUTHOR (hanging indent)
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (1983). Washington,
DC:American Psychological Association.

NO AUTHOR (no indent)
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (1983). Washington, DC:American Psychological Association.

ONE AUTHOR
Sargent, W. (1923). The enjoyment and use of color. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.

TWO OR MORE AUTHORS
Reed, J.G. & Baxter, P.M. (1991). Library use; a handbook for psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

CORPORATE AUTHOR
San Diego Museum of Art. (1980). Sculpture in California, 1975-1980: an exhibition. San Diego: The Museum.

EDITOR OR COMPILER
Corsini, R.J. (Ed.). (1994). Encyclopedia of Psychology (2nd ed., Vols. 1-4). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

EDITION OTHER THAN 1ST
Saxton, D.F. (Ed.). (1990). Mosby's comprehensive review of nursing. (13th ed.). St. Louis: C.V. Mosby.

CHAPTER IN BOOK
Dougherty, C.M. (1992). Surveillance. In G. M. Bulechek & J.C. McCloskey (Eds.). Nursing intervention. (pp.500-511). Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company.

UNSIGNED ARTICLE IN AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
Body image. (1970). InR.M. Goldenson (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (pp.168-170). Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT (corporate author)
U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census. (1995). 1990 CPH-1, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Summary Social, Economic, and Housing Characteristics United States. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce.

Print ARTICLES
ANONYMOUS
Post-tenure review. (1998). Academe, 84(5), 61-67.

ONE AUTHOR
Inchausti, P. (1994). Reductionist approaches to community ecology. The American Naturalist, 143 (2), 201-221.

TWO OR MORE AUTHORS
Newcombe, N. & Fox, N.A. (1994). Infantile amnesia: through a glass darkly. Child Development, 65 (1), 31-40.

MAGAZINE
Moore, T. (1994, March/April). Soul mates. Psychology Today, 26-31.

NEWSPAPER
Fields, S. (1994, March 7). Motivation, not money, is message for young. The Des Moines Register, p 5A.

NO AUTHOR
Centerpiece of reforms in doubt. (1994, March 7). The Des Moines Register, p 3A.

Video (documentary with corporate author)
Whitney Museum of Art. (1987). American Art Today A View from the Whitney: the 1987 Bienniel Exhibition from the Whitney Museum of Art [Videotape]. N.Y.: Whitney Museum of Art.

Video (feature film)
Lean, D. (Director). (1993). The Bridge on the River Kwai [Videotape]. Burbank, CA: Columbia TriStar Home Video.

INTERVIEWS
Interviews are considered personal communication and do not provide recoverable information. Do not included any form of personal communication in the reference list when using APA format. In the text, cite the interview in the following ways: J. A. Jones (personal communication, January 1, 1996) stated... ...was important news (J. A. Jones, personal communication, January 1, 1996).

World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a way to find multimedia information on computers called servers, on the Internet. Files found on the WWW should be acknowledged and cited like any other information. Sometimes information is available in paper (eg. magazine article) and also on the WWW. Always cite the version you used as there is no guarantee that they are exactly the same.

Included here are APA citation exemplars for the files found on the WWW. As electronic publishing is quickly growing and changing, the recommendations on citation format are also developing. These examples are based on APAStyle.org a product of the American Psychological Association found at http://www.apastyle.org/elecsource.html. The basic forms mirror the analogous print resources (articles, books) but should include the date you found it and the publication medium (WWW address).

One important difference in citing WWW sources is that page numbers are not used in the body of a paper. Electronic articles are one file and therefore one page. Links to additional files are also each just one page. If the article is also in print form and a starting page number or inclusive page numbers are used in a periodical index or on a webpage, that page number(s) is part of the citation on your literature cited page but not used in the body of your paper.

Electronically stored information is mutable. It is also ephemeral and may be here today and gone tomorrow, or it may move to another server at a new location. Take care to get the complete information needed for your citation. It may be several different files such as the journal title page and the article itself which may have several files.

The basic style for web delivered citations is:
Author [if provided]. (date - if available). Title of Electronic Work. Date of access, from www address or source.

Individual Electronic Work (webpage) Without Author
Latin Phrases and Words Used in English. Retrieved December 10, 1999, from http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/englatin.htm

Individual Electronic Work (webpage) With Author
Beard, Robert. A Web on On-line Dictionaries. Retrieved December 10, 1999, from http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/diction.html

Part of a Work such as an Online Dictionary or Encyclopedia
Definition of mutable. In Hypertext Webster Interface. Retrieved January 16, 1996, from http://c.gp.cs. cmu.edu: 5103/prog/webster?mutable

Document on an organizational, governmental agency, educational or institutional website.
American Nurses Association. (1996). Telehealth--issues for Nursing. Retrieved November 11, 2001, from Nursing World Reading & Reference Room site: http://www.nursingworld.org/readroom/

Electronic Book
Baddeley, A. D. (1999). Essentials of human memory. Hove, England: Psychology Press. Retrieved November 09, 2001, from netLibrary: http://www.netlibrary.com.

Full-text Journal Article from Commercial Database
Steele, K.M., Bass, K.E. & Crook, M.D. (1999). The mystery of the Mozart effect: failure to replicat. Psychological Science, 10 (4), 366(4). Retrieved January 25, 2005 from EBSCOhost database.

Full-text Magazine Article from Commercial Database
Grochow, J. M. (1999, August). Productivity and the IT personnel shortage. PC Week.23: 75. Retrieved January 25, 2005 from EBSCOhost database.

Full-Text Newspaper Article from Commercial Database
Caniglia, J. & Reed, E. (2001, October 2). Sears Tower plot 'completely unfounded', says FBI. The Plain Dealer, A5. Retrieved January 25, 2005 from Newsbank database.

Newspaper Article from Publisher's Website
Boshart, R. (1999, May 19). GOP resumes tax-cut push. The Gazette, Retrieved September 8, 1999 from, http://www.gazetteonline.com.

Image (art reproduction, photograph or other graphic) from Website
Kaufman, S. (ca 1993). Japanese Crane in Snow. Retrieved November 10, 1999 from, http://search.corbis.com/default.asp?i=10898330&vID=1&rID=101

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