APA (American Psychological Association) style is one of two major styles used on this campus. APA is generally favored by certain disciplines, usually in the hard sciences and those such as sociology and (obviously) psychology. While most people think of citation styles when they hear APA or MLA (the other major style used on this campus, often favored by the humanities), the style goes beyond citation into how the paper is set up, how you handle illustrations, graphs, and other visual components, whether you use and how you set up headings, and they even tell you how to set up your identifying elements (your name, instructor name, paper title, etc.). These styles aren't just used in classrooms, though--they are used in publications like journals or books by professionals. It's good to be familiar with the style of your field of study, especially if you may end up writing your own peer-reviewed article or book for publication.
Every semester, I present 2 sessions on APA style. Session 1 is about setting up your paper--margins, capitalization, adding figures and tables, appendices, and more. Session 2 is on citation and References (bibliography). You don't have to attend part 1 to attend a session of part 2. If you are attending for extra credit, please put your instructor's name in the chat so that I can note it down and reach out to your instructor to verify your attendance. Slides are available to students on request.
The dates and times (all in EST) for fall semester 2025 for each workshop is as follows:
You have your sources, you've taken notes and are ready to start writing. Part 1 of 2 on the APA seminars is all about setting up your paper--margins, formatting, how to add and credit images, creating appendices, and more.
@10:15 AM: Sept. 30
@ 11 AM : Sept. 22, Sept. 29
@ 12:15 PM: Sept. 30
@ 2 PM: Sept. 8, Sept. 29
@ 5 PM: Sept. 22, Sept. 23, Sept. 30, Oct. 20, Oct. 21, Nov. 3, Nov. 4
This part focuses on citing--proper citation of the main types of sources as well as in-text citation. While no single workshop can cover how to cite every source out there, we'll cover the basics and get you set up with the fundamentals.
@ 10:15 AM: Oct. 2
@ 11 AM: Sept. 24, Oct. 1
@12: 15 PM: Oct. 2
@ 2 PM: Sept. 10, Oct. 1
@ 5 PM: Sept. 24, Sept. 25, Oct. 2, Oct. 22, Oct. 23, Nov. 5, Nov. 6
This section is for quick reference for the most basic APA Style elements. For more detailed explanations, please attend a seminar or go to Purdue OWL for assistance.
Margins: 1 inch all around (usually Word's default). Don't justify the right margins, don't use auto-hyphens (neither are Word defaults).
Paragraph indents: 1/2 inch from left margin--Word's default setting.
Font: Should be a readable font and size; often Times New Roman or Arial are specified by instructors, and usually 12-14 point size. Always follow instructor preference.
Line spacing: Double-space consistently throughout the paper, except at the title page as noted below. You may notice that Word's default settings add extra spacing between paragraphs or lines whenever you use the enter key. You can fix this easily at the start of your paper by going into the Paragraph settings under the Home tab (the arrow in the lower right corner expands this menu), and setting the Before and After under the Spacing section to 0. While you're there, you can also set your paper to double-space. If you wait until after you typed your paper, you can still make these changes--but you'll have to click and drag your mouse to select all your text to do so.
Header: Add page numbers from your first page by going to insert--header & footer--page number--choose top of page, plain number 3. The numbering should be automatic.
Title page usually required. It will be its own page. Follow this format:
Capitalization rules differ in APA depending on what section you're on. Standard writing rules (capitalize proper nouns, first word in a sentence) work when you're in the body of the paper, but the rules for capitalizing your titles, titles of works in the body of your paper, and headings follow different rules (title case rules) from capitalizing titles in your References section (sentence case rules).
There are a few that are consistent throughout both uses. Always:
*Bonus tip: Scientific names are always italicized as well.
Those are the only things that are capitalized in titles in your References section. All other words will start with a lower case letter; this is the way sentences are usually structured in books, magazines, and other sources you read, so it's called "sentence case capitalization". However, the title of your paper, titles of books and other sources you refer to in your work, and headings follow different rules. For those, you also capitalize:
DO NOT capitalize:
Because this is how APA treats titles, this is called "title case capitalization".
Example (title case): A Plague Upon Ye: Yersenia pestis and the Black Death
All major words are capitalized, including "ye", which is a pronoun from Old and Middle English periods. And is a conjunction of 3 words and therefore doesn't get capitalized.
Example (sentence case): A plague upon ye: Yersenia pestis and the Black Death
Black Death is capitalized because it is a proper noun--it refers to a specific pandemic of the plague that struck between 1346--1353 and killed up to an estimated half of Europe's population at that time.
All papers have a list of sources called a bibliography; in APA, the bibliography is called References. The list should be in alphabetical order by the author's last name. This list will be referenced in the text with citations (sometimes called in-text citations). These two elements--the bibliography and the citations, work together.
There are 3 main reasons why the bibliography and citations are important; most students have heard of the first but may not have considered the other two:
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's information, ideas, or words without giving them credit; it's a form of stealing (intellectual theft) and is against the University's academic integrity policies. While students may stress over how to avoid plagiarism, with a bit of organization, it isn't difficult to properly provide citations. It starts with taking notes.
If you write notes on note cards or a separate piece of paper, make sure you record the basic information from the source with the notes--author's last name, a short form of the title, year, and page number(s). Your note card may look like this:
In-text citations in APA use the author's last name(s), year, and page number(s). Including the title on your notes may not be necessary but could be helpful when you're ready to cite anyway. An in-text citation comes at the end of the information that's being cited and is set apart from the text by parentheses, and then ends with the sentence's period:
The influenza virus is very small; its size allows it to spread easily as airborne particles in coughs and sneezes. Each droplet in every cough or sneeze can have up to 500,000 virus particles in it (Sherman, 2007, p. 161).
If the information used in the sentence or paragraph spans multiple pages, use pp. instead of p.
The last 2 reasons to cite information--verification of source and further reading--relies heavily on the References as well as in-text. Let's say I really wanted to know more about Mr. Sherman's thoughts on the influenza virus and wanted to read the book that bit of information came from. The in-text citation tells me the author, so all I have to do to find out all I need to get the book is to go to the References page and look for the source written by a person whose last name is Sherman. Because the References should be alphabetical, it's easy to skim even a long list of sources. This is what I should find:
Sherman, I. W. (2007). Twelve diseases that changed our world. ASM Press.
APA has a standard pattern that may have a few variations depending on the type of source you're citing, so it's usually easy to follow. The author is, of course, where you start. Here are the elements, in order of appearance, for a standard APA citation.
Author: Last name, then first initial and, when available, middle initial. For each author after the first (up to 20), use a comma to separate and repeat; the last author will have the & symbol before it.
Date: Books have a year in four digits. The date is put in parentheses, with a period at the end.
Title: This is the title of the book or chapter. If the title is a book, the title is italicized, as in the example above. If the title is the name of a book chapter, do not italicize.
Source information: This element is a little expansive, since it includes all other information relevant to the source type. For citing an entire book, this is simply the publisher. However, if you're citing a specific book chapter, the chapter name becomes the title and the book title, as well as the publisher, becomes the source information. It would look like this:
Sherman, I. W. (2007). Bubonic plague. Twelve diseases that changed our world. ASM Press.
Periodicals are so called because they are released regularly on a schedule; some periodicals, like newspapers, are released daily, while many magazines are released monthly. Newspapers, magazines, journals, and even comic books are periodicals, if they stick to a regular "period" of release.
Periodicals have different elements than books, especially in the source information, but there are many similarities, too. Here are the elements and some examples of periodical sources:
Author: Last name, then first initial and, when available, middle initial. For each author after the first (up to 20), use a comma to separate and repeat; the last author will have the & symbol before it.
Date: Books have a year in four digits. Periodicals, like journals and magazines, and web sources can have day and month (spelled out) as well. The date is put in parentheses, with a period at the end.
Title: For periodicals, this is the title of the article (unless you are citing a comic, in which case it would be the issue name). These are NOT italicized.
Source information (in order): Journal title, volume number(issue number), pages article is on. URL or persistent link to record, when applicable
Note that I have italicized and used the appropriate punctuation above so you could use this as a template. Examples are below.
Johnson, J. A. (2025). The world the plague made: The Black Death and the rise of Europe. International Social Science Review, 101(1), 1–3.
Parker, C. E., Hiss, A. N., Spyrou, M. A., Neumann, G. U., Slavin, P., Nelson, E. A., Nagel, S., Dalidowski, X., Friederich, S., Krause, J., Herbig, A., Haak, W., & Bos, K. I. (2023). 14th century Yersinia pestis genomes support emergence of pestis secunda within Europe. PLoS Pathogens, 19(7), 1–16. https://doi-org.forward.marian.edu/10.1371/journal.ppat.1011404
Start at the top and center the word References. Double-space uniformly. Word default settings add extra spaces whenever you use the enter key to start a new line or paragraph so use the Home tab and Paragraph menu (use the expand arrow at the bottom right corner to get there) and set the Spacing for both Before and After to 0. While you're there, the line spacing should be double-spaced.
Your References should be double-spaced and should use a hanging indent--the first line of each source listed will start all the way over at the left margin but every line underneath that source will be indented. It's easy enough to do in Word:
