by Kelly Lapp

Created on: May 13, 2008

The American Psychological Association (APA) style of writing is the standard for most social science fields, including psychology, sociology, and education. While most students learn MLA style writing in high school, APA style is often not addressed until a student enters college, and then it is only mentioned to students in one of those fields of social sciences. However, there are distinct differences between the two styles, and any student asked to write in APA style should know what those differences are.

APA style is used in fields that focus on research and statistics. For that reason, everything about this writing style is meant to bring about simplicity. The idea is to let the reader focus on the information itself, not to tire his brain trying to read the information.

As with MLA and most other academic writing styles, APA style relies on the parenthetical citation, where the source information is placed in parentheses in the body of the paper. However, APA writing is unique in that the author's last name and the date of publication are used instead of the book's title. So, the citation would look like this:
Smith's (2008) research shows that most students are not as familiar with APA style writing as they are with MLA.

APA style prefers that the citation be included in the text whenever possible. However, if you choose not to include it, then the information should appear at the end of the reference.
Research shows that most students are not as familiar with APA style writing as
they are with MLA. (Smith, 2008)

If you are directly quoting the source, then you would also put the page number in parentheses at the end of the quote. The citation goes outside any punctuation.
Smith's (2008) research shows that "most students are not as familiar with APA style writing as they are with MLA." (p. 75)
A page number is not required for a summary or paraphrase, but it is recommended.

In many cases, a book might be written by more than one author. If the book has two authors, include both authors' last names in the citation. If the names are included in the text, separate the names with the word "and"; if they are listed in parentheses, separate them with an ampersand (&). If the book has three to five authors, list all of them in the first reference, then list only the first author's last name followed by "et al". In the event the source has more than six authors, list the first author's last name followed by "et al" every time the reference appears.

With the

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