APA Style Guide for magazines and scholarly journals

APA Style or the American Psychological Association Style is frequently used in the social sciences and the physical sciences. It is different in small ways from the other style guides. Your teacher or professor can tell you what style to use, but this style is frequently used with subjects such as psychology, sociology, history, geography, anthropology, archeology, geography, history, political science, international studies, cultural studies such as Native American studies, African American studies, Latin American studies, Asian studies, earth sciences, natural sciences, environmental science and others. This page addresses books. Check out More APA Style Guide sample here.

Essays, Articles in Periodicals or Scholarly Journals

Scroll down for detailed explanations and tips.

When you are getting your sources, collect these pieces of information:

- Authors' names

- Date of publication

- Title

- City of publication

- Company of publication

- Name or electronic database if used

This information should be included on the first page of the book where the title is written and on the next page which has the book's credits.

Samples

Basic format: Essay or book chapter

      Author's last name, first initial of first name. (year published). Essay or chapter name. Title of book, volume number if applicable, page numbers. City where it was published: Name of publisher.

Example: Essay or book chapter

      Bradford, N. (1997). The salt wars. History of the Southwest, 2, 259-287. Pittsburgh: Fastington Press

Basic format: Articles in Periodicals or Scholarly Journals

      Author's last name, first initial of first name. (year published). Article name. Title of Journal with Capitalized Wordsbook, volume number if applicable, page numbers.

Example: Articles in Periodicals or Scholarly Journals

      Sohn, G. (2010). China's new commuter. Journal of Population Sciences, Vol. 25, (5), 23-45.

Basic format: Electronic Journal Article From a Database

      Author's last name, first initial of first name. (year published). Article name. Title of Journal with Capitalized Words, volume number if applicable, page numbers. Retrieved from name of database.

Example: Electronic Journal Article From a Database

      Browning, C. (2010). French-Canadians and the Mill culture. Inside Diversity, 17-35. Retrieved from International Studies ISP database.

Steps to writing a bibliography entry for articles

1. Author - Write the author's last name, a comma, then the first letter in their first name (and the first letter of their middle name if available). Put a period after their initial (or inititals).

2. If there is more than one author, put them in alphabetical order. Before the last author, use an ampersand which looks like & instead of the word "and".

3. Write the year the article was published in parentheses. Put a period.

5. Write the title of the article. Do not use quotes, underline or italics. Just use normal font. Put a period after. Only the first word of the articles's title and any proper nouns should be capitalized. Proper nouns include people's names, business names, countries and specific places. The title may start with a few words, followed by a colon and then the rest of the title. In that case, capitalize the first word after the colon.

6. If the selection comes from a book, write the title of the book and underline it. Put a period after. Only the first word of the book's title and any proper nouns should be capitalized. Proper nouns include people's names, business names, countries and specific places. The title may start with a few words, followed by a colon and then the rest of the title. In that case, capitalize the first word after the colon.

7. If the selection from a Scholarly Journal, write the title of the journal and underline it. Put a period after. Capitolize the first letter of every word in the title, with the exception of articles such as the, an and a. Put a comma, then write the volume number of the journal, also underlined. If there is an issue number, put it after the volume number in parentheses.

8. Following a book or journal name, put a comma, then put the page numbers referenced.

9. For journal articles taken from electronic databases, use the same format as articles in periodicals but add Retrieved from and write the name of the database, followed by a period.

More information: We hope this page was helpful and provided you with some information about How to write a bibliography in APA style. Check out more APA Style Guide tips here or our main page for more articles here Can U Write.