APA Style  

Created February 2010; modified July 2012

Please use the tabs across the top to navigate your way to further information and examples.

Please note: one of the major changes in the APA 6th edition is the requirement for a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) in the citation of electronic sources when available.

Please remember to check with your unit co-ordinator or tutor before submitting your assignments, as their style preference may vary from the guidelines presented here.

Murdoch School of Psychology students, please see the School of Psychology Referencing Guidelines below before using the Library’s APA citation guide.

This LibGuide follows the principles and examples given in the 6th edition of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (2010).

There are two parts to referencing: the citations within the text of your paper and the reference list at the end of your paper.

APA style APA is an "author-date" system, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) and year of publication given wholly or partly in round brackets.

Use only the surname of the author(s) followed by a comma and the year of publication. Include page, chapter or section numbers if you need to be specific:

No distinction is made between books, journal articles, internet documents or other formats except for electronic documents that do not provide page numbers. In this case use the paragraph number, if available, with the abbreviation para.

The full details of the source are given in a reference list at the end of the document:

Reference list entries contain all the information that someone needs to follow up your source. Reference lists in APA are arranged alphabetically by author.

See Reference Formats or All Examples for details on how to construct references for specific resources such as books, journals and web pages.