How To Apply The APA Citation Style To Your Dissertation

There are two kinds of APA citations that should be in any kind of paper, including a dissertation. These are the in text citations and citations that are located in the reference part of your paper. I will break down each one of these so you can see what should be included in your dissertation.

APA Citations

• In text citations for a single author: (Smith, 2000).
• If author’s name appears as part of the text: Smith (2000), this is when the author is used in the narrative of your dissertation.
• If there are two authors, you separate them with an ampersand: (Smith & Jones, 2000).
• And if it is in text, you use and: Smith and Jones (2000).
• If there is no author then you do things a little differently, if it is a corporation, agency, or association, then you use the name: (The National Rifle Association [NRA], 2000). You can also use, (NRA, 2000).
• If you just have the name of an article then you use the title and it looks like this: (“How To Apply The APA Citation Style To Your Dissertation,” 2000). And don’t forget if you reference the book in the paper italicize the title.
• And if you are using only a page from a book, then your citation will look like this: (Smith, 2000, pg. 2).
• Now we are going to talk about how to cite your references. If you are going to reference a journal then it should read like this: Author’s last name, first initial. (Year published). Article Title. Journal Title. Volume (issue)(number of issue), pages used.
• Magazine: Author’s last name, first initial. (Year, month, day of publication). Title. Magazine Title, Volume, pages. If it is an online magazine it’s the same with the URL at the end with retrieved from.
• Entire Book: Author’s last name, first initial. (Year published). Book Title. Publisher.
• Book Chapter or Pages: Author’s last name, first initial. (Year published). Chapter Title. Editor initial, last name (Ed.), Book Title (pages). Publisher.
• Website: Author’s last name, first initial. (Year published). Title. [Blog, website, forum, etc.]. Retrieved from: URL.

These are the basic citations that you will use in your dissertation. If you run into citations that are not on this list then you can American Psychological Association website, they have a more detailed list there and you can also use sites like Bib Me to create the citations for you.