A Quick Guide to the Dissertation Citation Format

The American Psychological Association style is a type of citation style that comes with an author-date referencing format. In actuality, this referencing format was primarily developed for use in psychology; however, it was eventually adopted by other diverse disciplines.

More than that, there are 2 primary components of this author-date referencing format- the detailed reference list that is positioned as the end of the document and the in-text author-date quoting at the suitable area within the text of the document; for instance Reeves, 2015. Please be guided that all in-text referencing must contain a corresponding quotation list entry and the opposite requires for quotation list entries.

Here are some more guides to dissertation referencing structure:

  • It is fundamental to be consistent with your quotation format across the document.
  • All of the sources in the quotation list must also be indicated in the text.
  • Do not forget to thoroughly check your wiritng project instructions, or with your professor, any specific quotation requirements.
  • List the sources in alphabetical order by the family name according to the first noted author or last name of the author. Please take into consideration that the order of the authors on a document is pivotal so it is not advised to rearrange them.
  • It is not necessary to add full stops to URLs.
  • See to it to provide organization names in full except that they are evidently discernible as abbreviations; for instance, APA that stands for American Psychological Association.
  • In a serial title, journal or periodical, it is imperative to provide the title in full, that is, in lower and upper case letters. Take note that the title must also be italicized.
  • In the same way, it is fundamental to check the source details against the actual quotation. Here, you are citing that you have read the reference when you indicate it.
  • In a book or chapter title or article, keep in mind that you only need to capitalize the first word of the title and the subtitle if there’s any and the same goes with proper nouns. Do not forget that the title of the books should be italicized.
  • All quotations indicated in text should also be included in the source list but unpublished items like personal correspondence are no longer needed to be indicated.
  • In the event that there are 2 articles that have the same authors as well as date, it is pivotal to order the sources in an alphabetical approach through the title of the article and then put a letter suffix to the publication year. For instance 2015a, 2015b and so on.
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