APA Guidelines: Reference List
Tuesday July 31, 2012
Elite Research explains the APA guidelines for a reference list. Elite Research is a global provider of research design and statistical consulting. They support academic, corporate, medical/health, and non-profit researchers in designing, collecting, analysing, and reporting efficient and accurate results.
The reference list provides the reader with specific information that they can use to locate all sources cited within the paper. This section should appear at the end of the paper and be labelled “References” at the top, center with no additional formatting requirements. Each source cited must be located in the reference list; likewise, no unused sources may appear in the reference list. This section should be double-spaced.
The formatting of the reference list is very specific. Every line after the first line in an entry should be indented one ½ inch from the left margin, this is known as a hanging indention. Journal titles should be written out completely with the correct punctuation and capitalization. All major words in journal titles should be capitalized.
Author names should appear inverted (i.e., last name, first name). All authors should be listed up to 7. If there are more than 7 authors, the first six should be listed followed by ellipses and then the last author name. References should be listed in alphabetical order according to the last name of the first author of each work. If multiple works by the same author are used, they should be listed in order of the dates published beginning with the earliest.
When listing chapters, articles, or web pages, it is appropriate to only capitalize the first letter of the first word in the title. Also capitalize the first word after a colon or dash and proper nouns. In a hyphenated word, do not capitalize the second word. The titles of longer works such as books and journals should be italicized; however, titles of shorter works, such as articles or essays, should be left unformatted. The format for citations is outlined in the APA manual (6th Edition). It is important to use the correct format for your source.
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