1. Why and How to Write
APA-Style Citations in
the Body and Reference
Section of Your Papers
Drew C. Appleby
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

2. HOW AND WHY TO WRITE APA-STYLE CITATIONS
Author Contact Information:
Dr. Drew C. Appleby
IUPUI Department of Psychology
402 North Blackford Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3275
Copyright 2010 by Drew C. Appleby.

3. The purpose of this presentation is to
explain WHY it is necessary to cite the
sources you use to support what you
write in your papers and HOW to cite
these sources in correct APA style
according to the 6th edition of the
Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association.

4. APA-Style Citations in the
Body of Your Paper

5. What is the purpose of including
APA-style citations in the body
of a paper?
• Give appropriate credit to the person or
persons whose words or ideas you are using to
support what you have written in your paper.
• If you do not give credit to those whose work
you use, you are guilty of plagiarism

6. Remember that for this class, you
are not allowed to use quotations
in your paper.

7. If you paraphrase from a source
give the author(s) credit for their
ideas as follows:
• According to Jones and Smith (2009), phobias
can be treated more successfully by cognitive
therapy than psychoanalysis.
• According to some researchers (Jones & Smith,
2009), phobias can be treated more
successfully…

8. When citing sources that have a
lot of authors
• The 1st time you cite in-text, include all authors if there are
5 or less authors:
– Jones, Smith, Webber, and Connor (2009) discuss…
– Previous research supports the idea of the social
exclusion principle (Jones, Smith, Webber, & Connor,
2009).
• The 2nd time you cite in-text (or if there are more than 5
authors):
– Jones et al. (2012) showed that…
– Previous research indicates that memory for items is better when
the item is at the beginning of a list (Jones et al., 2012).

9. If you refer to a primary source (e.g., a
journal article by Jones) you read about
in a secondary source (e.g., a textbook
by Smith), you must create the following
type of citation:
DO NOT DO THIS! Find the original
article and read it yourself 

10. Important details to remember...
• Use an ampersand (&) between authors when their
names are within parentheses.
. . . is an effective treatment (Smith & Jones, 2009).
• Use a regular and between authors when their
names are not within parentheses.
. . . is the most effective treatment according to
Smith and Jones (1999).
• If your source does not have a date, replace the
date in the citation with n.d., which is the
abbreviation for “no date.”
. . . British Psychological Association (n.d.).

11. APA-Style Citations
in the Reference Section
of Your Paper

12. What is the purpose of APA-style
citations in a reference section?
The citations in your reference
section provide your readers with the
information necessary to retrieve the
sources you cited in the body of your
paper by performing a library or
online search.

13. What questions are answered in
an APA-style reference that will
enable a reader to perform a
successful search?
• Who wrote this document?
• When was it written?
• What was its title?
• Where was it published?

14. Example
Suppose you paraphrased information
from a journal article entitled “Sexy
red: Perceived sexual receptivity
mediates the red-attraction relation in
men viewing woman” that was
written in 2012 in the Journal of
Experimental Psychology.

15. Who wrote it?
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.

16. When was it written?
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T. (2012)

17. What was its title?
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T. (2012). Sexy red:
Perceived sexual receptivity mediates the red-attraction
relation in men viewing woman.

18. Who published it?
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T. (2012).
Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates
the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
Be sure to capitalize the first letter of each of
the major words in the journal title.

19. What volume (and pages) was it
published in?
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.
(2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual
receptivity mediates the red-attraction
relation in men viewing woman. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology,48, 787-
790.

20. Important details to remember...
• Spacing
• Use of the ampersand (&)
• Use of italics
• Capitalization
• Hanging indentation
• Primary and secondary sources

21. Spacing
Follow each punctuation mark (e.g., comma,
period, and colon) with one space.
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.
(2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates
the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,48, 787-
790.

22. Use of the ampersand (&)
Use an ampersand before the final author and
precede it with a comma.
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.
(2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates
the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,48, 787-
790.

23. Use of italics
Italicize the title of the journal article.
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.
(2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates
the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,48, 787-
790.

24. Capitalization
Capitalize only the first word in the title of an
article, except for proper nouns and the first
word that follows a colon.
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T. (2012). Sexy red:
Perceived sexual receptivity mediates the red-attraction
relation in men viewing woman. Journal of
Experimental
Social Psychology,48, 787-790.

25. Hanging paragraph indentation
Use your word processor’s hanging indent
command to indent the second and all
following lines of your reference.
Pazda, A.D., Elliot, A.J., & Greitmeyer, T.
(2012). Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates
the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,48, 787-
790.

26. Important exceptions
to these rules

27. All the important words in the title of a
journal are capitalized, and the journal title
and its volume number are italicized. If page
numbers start at 1 in each issue of a volume,
put the issue number in parenthesis—but not
in italics—immediately after the volume
number.
Jones, L. K. (2003). The social life of
chimpanzees. Journal of Animal
Behavior, 7(2), 1-18.

28. If two citations by the same author(s) with the same
date appear in the text of your paper, one will appear
as Jones (2006a) and the other will appear as Jones
(2006b). The a or b will be determined by how they
are alphabetized in the reference section, not the
order in which they appear in the text. In this case,
the citations in the reference section would look like
the following because the B in Birds comes before
the Z in Zebra. (Please note that an A or a The at the
beginning of a title is ignored in the alphabetizing
process.)
Jones, T. J. (2006a). Birds are smart creatures. Dallas, TX: Harcourt.
Jones, T. J. (2006b). A zebra is a striped horse. Peoria, IL: Wiley.

29. Online Scholarly Journal Article: Citing DOIs
According to The APA Style Guide to Electronic References, 6 th edition,
you should use the DOI format which the article appears with. Because
online materials can potentially change URLs, APA recommends
providing a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), when it is available, as
opposed to the URL. DOIs are an attempt to provide stable, long-lasting
links for online articles. They are unique to their documents and consist of
a long alphanumeric code. Many-but not all-publishers will provide an
article's DOI on the first page of the document.
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of
article.Title of Journal, volume number, page range.
doi:0000000/000000000000
Brownlie, D. (2007). Toward effective poster presentations:
An annotated bibliography. European Journal of Marketing,
41, 1245-1283. doi:10.1108/03090560710821161

30. Writing Papers in APA Format
• Aside from citations, APA formatting has
other requirements for written work in the
field of Psychology (manuscripts).

31. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Title Page
– Abstract
– Introduction
– Method
– Results
– Discussion
– References
– Tables & Figures

32. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Title Page
• Includes:
– Running head
– Page number
– Title
– Author name(s)
– Affiliation

33. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Abstract
• 150-250 word summary of the entire article
• Block writing format

34. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Introduction
• Purpose of the introduction is to introduce the topic
and place the topic into the context of research in
the field
• Inverted triangle format

35. Figure 15.1 The Inverted Triangle Represents the Way an Introduction should
be Written.

36. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Introduction

37. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Method
• Provides reader with information about how the
study was conducted
• Contains information on the:
– Design
– Participants
– Controls used
– Step by step description of what happened

38. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Results
• Where you present your findings to the readers
• Provides information on the descriptive and
inferential statistics used and the outcomes

39. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– Discussion
• Restate the purposes of the study
• Evaluate hypotheses
• Relate results to prior research
• Identify limitations

40. APA-Style Writing
• Manuscript
– References
• List of all works cited in the paper
– Tables & Figures
• Visual representations of results not reported in the
manuscript

41. The End 
Please note that for the weekly
review you will need to
determine if a citation is in APA
format (or not).