If you're citing a source that doesn't have page numbers, such as a website, include the paragraph or section number in parentheses:
According to the Nobel Prize organization, King "led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail'" (par. 3).
Quotations that run for more than four lines should be set off in blocks, without quotation marks. In the block-quote format, the parenthetical citation comes after the period:
King criticized the view that laws should always be obeyed by citing the example of Nazi Germany's laws against helping Jews:
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in
Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. (436)
If a paragraph does not give enough information to identify a citation, then include the author's name parenthetically:
Many people believe that disobeying laws that are unjust is actually an expression of "the very highest respect for the law" (King 435).
If you have two works by the same author, add a word or phrase from the title to identify the work:
King draws three different distinctions between "just laws" and "unjust laws" ("Letter" 434-35).
Bibliographical Citations
Full bibliographical citations are given at the end of an essay on a separate page titled "Works Cited." The Works Cited page lists sources alphabetically by author, or, if an author is unavailable, by title. When an author is listed multiple times, the listings are arranged alphabetically by title. Below are the formats for some of the most common kinds of citations that you will need on your Works Cited page.
Single-Author Book
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. New York: Basic, 2003. Print.
Multiple-Author Book (Fewer than Four Authors)
Malless, Stanley, and Jeffrey McQuain. Coined by God: Words and Phrases That First Appear in the English Translations of the Bible. New York: Norton, 2003. Print.
Works in an Anthology
Weil, Simone. "Equal." Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. 3rd ed. Ed. Michael Austin. New York: Norton, 2015. 571. Print.
Single-Author Journal Article (Paginated by Volume)
Weinberger, Jerry. "Pious Princes and Red-Hot Lovers: The Politics of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." Journal of Politics 65 (2003): 370-75. Print.
Multiple-Author Journal Article (Paginated by Issue)
Weaver, Constance, Carol McNally, and Sharon Moerman. "To Grammar or Not to Grammar: That Is Not the Question!" Voices from the Middle 8.3 (2001): 17-33. Print.
Scholarly Edition
Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Ed. Claudia Johnson. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.
Magazine Article—Monthly
Hawass, Zahi. "Egypt's Forgotten Treasures." National Geographic Jan. 2003: 74-87. Print.
Magazine Article—Weekly
Samuelson, Robert J. "The Changing Face of Poverty." Newsweek 18 Oct. 2004: 50. Print.
Newspaper Article
Farenthold, David. "Town Shaken by Lobster Theft." Washington Post 9 Oct. 2005: A3. Print.
Article from an Electronic Database
Moore, Kathleen D. "The Truth of the Barnacles: Rachel Carson and the Moral Significance of Wonder." Environmental Ethics 27.3 (Fall 2005): 265-77. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Oct. 2005.
Work That Appears Only Online
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. "The Meaning and Concept of Philosophy in Islam." Islamic Philosophy Online. Ed. Muhammed Hozien. Islamic Philosophy Online, Inc., 5 May 2007. Web. 23 Apr. 2009. Gross, Daniel. "The Quitter Economy." Slate. Slate, 24 Jan. 2009. Web. 26 April 2009.
Online Work also in Print
Dowd, Maureen. "Sacred Cruelties." New York Times, 7 April 2002. Web. 9 Oct. 2005.
APA Style
APA style is used in most social sciences, including education, nursing, and social work. In-text citations in the APA style give a publication date as well as a name, with full bibliographic information provided on a References page.
Before writing an essay, determine which style your instructor prefers and refer to an official style guide for detailed instructions on using that style. The following
table gives brief guidelines in MLA and APA styles for some of the most common documentation tasks. This table is not a replacement for a style manual, which provides much more detail on different kinds of documentation.
In-Text Documentation
When you summarize the contents of an article, document the source by placing the date immediately after the author's name:
King (1963) discusses the role of civil disobedience in trying to change unjust laws.
APA guidelines require page numbers at the end of quotations. This is also true if you paraphrase a passage or cite a fact that can be found on a specific page:
King (1963) defined an unjust law as one "not rooted in eternal and natural law" (p. 434).
King (1963) argued that moral laws take precedence over human laws (p. 434).
In APA articles, it is not unusual to have two sources by the same author (since someone working on a given topic in the social sciences will often contribute to several papers as part of an overall study). If the texts are from the same year, use lowercase letters to distinguish between different articles:
King (1963b) asserted that people have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws.
If your text does not contain enough information to identify a source that you are citing, give the name, date, and, if necessary, page number of that source in the parenthetical citation:
Many in the civil rights movement argued that civil disobedience was a moral duty (King, 1963, p. 434).
If you need to quote more than forty words, set the quotation off in a block. For block quotes, indent five spaces from the left margin and type the quoted text without quotation marks. The parenthetical citation comes after the period:
King (1963) also believed that laws that were not unjust in their nature could be applied in unjust ways:
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. (p. 435)
If you are citing a source that does not have a page number—such as a webpage—include instead the number of the paragraph where the information can be found, using either the fl symbol or the abbreviation "para."
According to the Nobel Prize organization, King "led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail'" (para. 3).
Bibliographical Citations
Full bibliographical citations are given at the end of an essay on a separate page titled "References." The References page lists works alphabetically by author, or, if an author is unavailable, by title. When an author is listed multiple times, the listings are arranged by date. Below are the formats for some of the most common kinds of citations that you will need on your References page.