1. APA Citation Tutorial
Part III: Creating Bibliographies

2. By the end of Part II, you will be able to
• Organize citations into full bibliographies
• Format bibliographies according to APA style
using correct spacing and hanging indents

3. After you have constructed citations for
individual resources that you are using in your
research, you will want to create a full
bibliography with those citations:

4. When you are using the APA style, a
bibliography will be labeled with the word
References
Other styles may require you to use the word
“bibliography” or the phrase “works cited,” but
APA requires that you use the word References
to label your bibliography.

5. Your citations need to be organized in a
particular way in your full bibliography.
The citations should be organized alphabetically
by the author, or whatever element of the
citation comes first. This will be the author most
often, but may be a title, if there is no author
listed.
A book by J. Adams, for example, would precede
an article written by D. Carr.

6. Test Yourself!
Put these citations into the appropriate order:
References
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice, learning, meaning, identity. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Collins, A., Brown, J. S. & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking
visible. American Educator, 6-11, 38-46.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral
participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Powell, A. (2012). Intentional communities of practice: The problem of interactivity. In
H. Wang (Ed.), Interactivity in E-Learning: Cases and Frameworks. Hershey, PA: IGI
Global.

7. Test Yourself!
The correct order is:
References
Collins, A., Brown, J. S. & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making
thinking visible. American Educator, 6-11, 38-46.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral
participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Powell, A. (2012). Intentional communities of practice: The problem of interactivity.
In H. Wang (Ed.), Interactivity in E-Learning: Cases and Frameworks. Hershey,
PA: IGI Global.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice, learning, meaning, identity. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

8. Additionally, you may have noticed that all of
the citations we have been working with
throughout this tutorial are indented in a special
kind of way.
This is called a hanging indent:
Powell, A. (2012). Intentional communities of
practice: The problem of interactivity. In H. Wang
(Ed.), Interactivity in E-Learning: Cases and
Frameworks. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

9. In order to produce a hanging indent, you need
to make sure that all lines but the first line in
your citation are indented.
In Microsoft Word, it is simple to do this:
1. Highlight the text you want to change
2. Right click in order to view the menu
3. Select “Paragraph”
4. In the Indentation section, use the “Special”
drop-down box to select “Hanging”
5. Select the “ok” button

10. Create a Hanging Indent

11. Finally, after making sure that your list is
alphabetized and correctly indented, you’ll want
to double check and make sure that your
bibliography is double spaced, just like the rest
of your paper.

12. In Summary
In order to create an appropriate APA
bibliography, follow these guidelines:
1. Label your bibliography References
2. Alphabetize your citations
3. Make sure your citations use hanging
indentation
4. Make sure your bibliography is double spaced

13. Now that we’ve discussed constructing and
formatting your bibliography, it is time to test
your understanding a bit more.
Click on the link above in order to complete the
activity (Activity 3) for this section, and to get a
sense of how well you understand and are able
construct and format full bibliographies.
When you are finished, continue on to the Final
Quiz