ESSAY FORMATTING USING APA

Formatting an Essay in
APA Style
Andrew Rasano
The University of Western Australia

Contents
Overview ................................................................................................................... 2
Summary ................................................................................................................... 3
References ................................................................................................................. 4

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Overview
APA (American Psychological Association) style is primarily used in the social
science disciplines. It is formatted like MLA, and shows many similarities, but is unique in
several key points.

APA uses parenthetical (or in-text) citations within sentences, but rather than
indicating the author's name and page number, APA includes author's name and date of
publication. The page number, represented with a p. or a pp., is only added to the citation
when using a direct quote (not a summary or paraphrase). If the author's name is
mentioned in the sentence, then place the date of publication in parentheses directly after
the name. If the name is not mentioned include the author's name and date in parentheses
at the end of the source material. And, if you use a direct quote, place the page number
after the publication date within the parentheses. Note the difference between the
following three examples:

Terrence (1999) has presented poignant examples from 150 interviews. However, it
has been pointed out that the research was conducted in a selective, highly biased, way.
(Strong, 1998). All of the interviewees have been called 'exceptions to the norm' (Strong,
Porter).

Note the first example paraphrases an author that is named in the sentence, the
second example paraphrases authors that are not named in the sentence, and the third
example provides a direct quote (thus the inclusion of the page numbers) but also does not
identify the authors within the sentence. If the authors were identified within the sentence
in the third example, the authors' names would be followed by the year of publication and

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only the page numbers would be in the parentheses at the end of the quote.

Summary
Finally, the bibliographic page in APA style differs from MLA, what APA calls the
Reference page. You will notice a few immediate differences from the MLA Works Cited
format. With APA you include the initial of the author's first name rather than the
complete name, the publication date immediately follows the author's name in parentheses,
and titles of articles are not surrounded with quotation marks (however titles of books,
magazines, journals, etc. are still underlined). The lists are still alphabetized by author's
last name (or title in the absence of an author) and the first line is flush left while
subsequent lines in the same entry are indented in (approximately 5 spaces or one tab). For
journals and magazines, publication title and volume number are both underlined,
followed by the issue number (not underlined) in parentheses. Only use a p. or a pp. to
indicate page numbers with newspapers. The only other time you would use a p. is to
indicate what pages an article is on within a collection or anthology. Again, if you have
any questions or need further assistance, come in to see us at the Writing Desk.

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References

Booth, W. (1979). Writing Essays: Secrets of the Trade. Composition Today:

13, 78-91.

Eckholm, E., & Gibbons, A. (1991). Guide to APA Style. Journal of Style Manuals, 18,
1561-1562.

Strong, R. L. & Porter, M. (1998). Grammatical Combinations. In S. T. Parker & K. R.

Gibson (Eds.), Language and Literacy (p. 540-578). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Terrence, H. S. (1999, November 1). Student Success in Community Colleges. Oregonian,

p.A6.

White, A. & Long, B. (Eds.). (1993). Praise for America's Literacy. Westport, CT:
Greenwood.