1. APA Writing Format

2. When should I use it? APA style is primarily used in the social sciences if you're taking a psychology or sociology course, chances are you'll be expected to write papers in APA style. Your instructor will let you know whether you need to use APA style for your papers.

3. What do I really need to know? In any paper that refers to other sources, you MUST cite these sources properly. Failure to do so could result in charges of plagiarism by your instructor

4. Parenthetical citations These are citations to original sources that appear in the text of your paper. This allows the reader to see immediately where your information comes from, and it saves you the trouble of having to make footnotes or endnotes.

5. What is need ed in the Citation? The APA style calls for three kinds of information to be included in in-text citations. The author's last name and the work's date of publication must always appear, and these items must match exactly the corresponding entry in the references list. The third kind of information, the page number, appears only in a citation to a direct quotation.

6. The Reference List –Format the reference list –The reference list should begin on a new page at the end of your paper, titled simply "reference" (without the quotation marks). –Include reference only for works that you have actually cited in your paper. cited in your paper –Alphabetize the entries, by author's last name. –If your list includes several works by the same author, arrange them chronologically and repeat the author's name at the beginning of each reference. –Double-space all lines, and indent second and subsequent lines of each entry

7. The Reference List: Article Journal article –Aldrich, John H. 1980. "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns." American Political Science Review 74:651-69. [The "74" is the volume number; what follows are the inclusive page numbers for the article.] Magazine article –Prufer, Olaf. 1964. "The Hopewell Cult." Scientific American, December. Chapter in a multi-author collection –Hermann, Margaret G. 1984. "Personality and Foreign Policy Decision Making: A Study of Fifty- Three Heads of Government." In Foreign Policy Decision Making, ed. Donald A. Sylvan and Steve Chan. New York

8. Book Book (1):Single author –Kessel, John H. 1968. The Goldwater Coalition: Republican Strategies in 1964. Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill. Book (2):Two authors, later edition –Sorauf, Frank J., and Paul Allen Beck. 1988. Party Politics in America. 6th ed. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. Edited collection –Ball, Terence, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson, eds. 1988. Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. Corporate author –American Political Science Association. 1993. style Manual for Political Science. Rev ed. Washington: American Political Science Association.

9. Two or more Authors First and subsequent citations Within a paragraph, omit the year in citations after the first one if no confusion with other studies will result Fisher (1999) administered a questionnaire... Fisher's results indicated...[new paragraph] The questionnaire administered by Fisher (1999) was used by..

10. Government Document Congressional reports and documents –U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. 1956. The Mutual Security Act. 84th Cong., 2d sess., S. Rept. 2273. Congressional debate –Congressional Record. 1966. 89th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 112, pt. 16. Presidential proclamations and executive orders –Reagan, Ronald. 1984. Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, Proclamation 5142. Federal Register, vol. 49, no. 2, p. 341. [The p. is used here to distinguish the page number from the volume and issue numbers.] Executive department document –U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1975. Statistical Abstract of the United States.

11. Dissertation or thesis Munger, Frank James. 1955. "Two-Party Politics in the State of Indiana." Ph.D. diss. Harvard University.

12. Paper presented at a meeting –Mefford, Dwain, and Brian Ripley. 1987. "The Cognitive Foundation of Regime Theory." presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.

14. A source with 1 or 2 authors. Cite name(s) in first and all subsequent citations Samples taken at Buffalo found no difference in consistancy (Adkins & Singh, 2001) Further study showed no change. Adkins and Singh (2001)

15. A source with no author Use the first few words of the title--in quotation marks for article or chapter, in italics for self-contained item ("Mad Cow," 2001) (Sleep Medicine, 2001)

16. Two or more works in parentheses Arrange by order of the reference list; use a semicolon between works Several researchers (Greenberg, Domitrovich, & Bumbarger, 2000; Roy, 1995; Yawn et al., 2000)...

17. Representative works Use e.g. (for Sample Citation) before parenthetical citationsThe need for more effective prevention of mental illness in children has been the focus of many reports (e.g. National Institute of Mental Health, 1998; U.S. Public Health Service, 2000; Weist, 2001).

18. Entire Web site Don't put on reference list. Include URL in-text instead The University of Wisconsin's Writing Center Web site is an excellent source of information on writing (http://www.wisc.edu/writing/).http://www.wisc.edu/writing/

19. Planning and writing a research Paper Discovering, Narrowing, and Focusing a Researchable Topic Try to find a topic that truly interests you Try writing your way to a topic Talk with your course instructor and classmates about your topic Pose your topic as a question to be answered or a problem to be solved