Citing and referencing documents is a tedious and time-consuming task. It becomes more difficult to outline your essay in the citation style referred to by The American Political Science Association or simply APSA citation.

To manually cite and reference in APSA format list the complete sources in the reference list at the end. APSA is a variation of ASA citation; if you are aware of the ASA format, it will be easy for you to cite in APSA style.

Discussed below are the steps to format the reference list.

General Guidelines 

  • APSA citation style follows ASA manual style’s author-date format to cite an essay outline.
  • Create a reference list immediately after the conclusion
  • Name it as References and place it by the left margin.
  • Use hanging indent form.
  • Set the first line of every reference against the left margin and indent the rest of the lines
  • Organise them alphabetically and not by the type of publication
  • Placed the author’s name first; if the author’s name is unavailable, then the book editor or article title.
  • List author’s last name followed by a comma and then author’s first name and middle name (if available). Do not add initials unless mentioned in the source.
  • Place date next to author’s name
  • Italicise the titles of the books and periodicals
  • Capitalise each word of the book or article titles excluding the definite or indefinite articles, small prepositions and conjunctions unless it is the first word of the title
  • Quote chapter and article titles

 

Reference a book

Author’s Surname, Author’s Name. Year of publication. Title. Edition. City: Publisher.

Example:

Larson, John, 1997. People in Organisations: An introduction to organisational behaviour. 4th ed. New York: Touchstone.

Reference a journal

Author’s Surname, Author’s Name. Year of publication. ‘Title’. Publication Title Volume Number (Issue Number): Page Used. http://Website URL (date of access) (if available)

 Example:

Larson, John, 1997. ‘People in Organisations’. An introduction to organisational behaviour. 46:2542-2549.

Reference chapter of an edited book

Author Surname, Author Forename. Edited. Year Published. ‘Chapter Title’. In Title, City: Publisher, Pages Used. http://Website URL (Date Accessed).

Example:

Manley, William & Sigrid Roteutscher, eds. 2007. Social Capital and Associations in European Democracies: A Comparative Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1033 -1036.

Reference a law case

Title. Document title/ name. Volume number, section or subsection, page

Example

Administrative Procedure Act. 1946. Statutes at Large. Vol. 60, sec. 10, p. 243.

Discussed above are the guidelines to reference varied sources in APSA style in a simple format. Use them to cite in APSA format manually.