American Psychological Association APA Style American Psychological Association

What is this for? APA format is used to document papers in the behavioral and social sciences APA is like MLA because it has parenthetical citations Numbered notes A reference page While APA and MLA have the same basic elements, how these elements are used is different with each style.

What makes it different? The emphasis in social sciences is on how current the source is, so APA style includes: Date of publication in parenthetical citations ex. Many others agree with the assessment that “this is a seriously flawed study” (Methasa,1994, p.22) and do not include its data in their own work. The date appears after the authors name on the references sheet. In addition, authors’ first and middle names are indicated by initial only.

More Features of APA style In quotations, put signal words in past tense (“Smith reported”) or present perfect tense (“as Smith has reported”) In your references list at the end of the paper, give full publication information, alphabetized by author (just like MLA) Use full last names and only initials for first and middle names of authors Capitalize only the first word and proper names in book and article titles, but capitalize all major words in journal titles. Use italics for book and journal titles; do not put article titles in quotation marks