Your 'References' list should give readers all the information they need to find each of the sources you mentioned in your paper.
Formatting the Reference Page:
- Begin the reference list on a new page after the text of the paper.
- The label "References" (or "Reference" if there is only one entry) should be centered and bolded at the top of the page. Do not italicize or underline it.
- All entries should be double-spaced (both within and between entries).
- Use a hanging indent for each reference: the first line of each reference is flush left, and subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches.
- References should be listed in alphabetical order by the first author's last name.
Elements of a Reference
A reference entry generally includes four elements:
- Author: Who is responsible for the work?
- Date: When was the work published?
- Title: What is the work called?
- Source: Where can the work be retrieved?
AUTHORS
Formatting Individual Author Names: When you list authors in your 'References' list, put the last name first, then a comma, and then their first and middle initials with a period after each.
- For example: Smith, A. A.
- If there are multiple authors, use a comma to separate each author's name.
- For example: Smith, J. R., & Jones, A. B.
- Make sure to put one space between the initials, like this: J. R., not J.R.
Formatting Multiple Authors Names:
- If a work has between 2 and 20 authors, put an ampersand (&) before the last author's name.
- If there are 21 or more authors, list the first 19 authors, then put three dots (...), and then write the name of the very last author. Don't use an ampersand before the last author in this case.
- Always write the author's name exactly as it appears in the original work.
- If an author's last name has a hyphen or two parts, include the whole thing.
Group Authors: If a group (like an organization) is the author, write out the full name followed by a period. Don't use any abbreviations for the group in the 'References' list. If two groups are listed as authors together, don't put a comma between their names.
Date: When you write down the date a source was published, you can do it in a few ways, depending on what information you have:
- Just the year (like 2020).
- The year, the month, and the day (like 2020, February 11).
- The year and the month (like 2020, February).
- The year and the season (like 2020, Summer).
Formatting Publication Date
- When you write the publication date of a source, put it in parentheses and then add a period after the closing parenthesis (for example, (2025).).
- Start with the year. If you also know the month and day, include them after the year, separated by commas (for example, (2020, February 11)).
- If you don't know the exact date but have an estimate, use 'ca.' (which means 'around') before the year (for example, (ca. 1999)).
- If a source doesn't have a publication date at all, use '(n.d.)' which stands for 'no date.'
Title
Formatting Title
- Works that are part of a larger whole (e.g., journal articles, edited book chapters):
- Do not italicize the title or place it in quotation marks.
- Capitalize using sentence case (capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any proper nouns).
- Works that stand alone (e.g., books, reports, websites, entire journals):
- Italicize the title.
- Capitalize using sentence case (capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any proper nouns).
Source
The source tells your reader where they can find the work you're citing. What you include here depends on what kind of publication it is. For a journal article, you'll list the journal's name, the volume and issue numbers, and the pages it appeared on. For a book, you'll give the publisher. If it's something you found online, you'll usually include a website address (URL).
