A Comprehensive Guide on Using APA Referencing Style

Out of a large number of referencing styles, one of the most widely used is APA Referencing style. This referencing format is mentioned in the style guide of the American Psychology Association.

The APA referencing format is generally used for citing sources in the field of social sciences and humanities. This is the most prevalent referencing style for scientific journals and medical guides. In the year 1923, this was first used in journal publishing.

The entire APA guidelines were published in a seven-page write-up in the psychological bulletin; a peer-reviewed academic journal in the year 1929. The APA Referencing guidelines have undergone constant revisions from 1929 to 2019.

The APA referencing style is also called as the author-date style. There are basically two kinds of referencing for every referencing style (a) in-text referencing or citation (b) Reference list.

The in-text referencing is done in the content body of the paper. The in-text referencing in APA follows a specific format. In APA in-text referencing, you need to mention the author’s name and then the year. The authors’ names and the year are separated by a comma. Both the author’s name and the date are enclosed in round brackets.

  

If you are quoting directly from an author, you need to include the page and paragraph number.

For creating the reference list in APA format, one needs to cite the following elements of the source

· Author’s Surname

· Initials

· Date Published

· Title of the source

· Location of publisher

· Publisher’s name

These elements need to be placed in the format shown below:

For APA referencing of a journal article, you have to mention the article title, then the journal title, volume, Edition, page numbers within the above category Title of the source.

While writing APA referencing of documents, we need to keep in mind that no distinction is made while referencing books, papers, journal articles or internet documents except for electronic documents that do not have page numbers.

You can make the referencing easier with our accurate APA referencing generator. APA Citation Machine helps to accurately reference any book, journal, magazine, e-book, newspaper or any other documents in minutes. Likewise, you can also get help from Chicago generator tools in case you are writing a paper in Chicago format. You can use it without a doubt for all referencing requirements of your assignments and papers.