Biology

Most of the sciences use APA style for citations. Be sure to check with your instructor to see which style is required for your class. See below for instructions on using APA style.

For more help with citations visit: the Citing Sources Guide

References Page - General Rules

• Make sure your document has 1-inch margins. Double space your lines and use a standard 12 pt. font (your whole paper should be formatted this way).
• At the top, center of your page, put the title "References"
• Start each citation's first line at the left margin
• Indent any of the citation's additional lines by a half inch. This is called a "hanging indent." Use the link above for instructions on creating a hanging indent using Microsoft Word.
• Your citation entries should be ordered alphabetically by the first word in each citation.

In-Text Citation - General Rules

• Citations come at the beginning or end of a sentence. Citing a source at the beginning of a sentence requires a signal phrase. Citations at the end of a sentence are in parentheses BEFORE the sentence's punctuation, but AFTER any quotation marks.
• The year is added, in parentheses, after the signal phrase.
• The citation starts with the first word or words from the source's References page entry. Most of the time, this is an author's last name.
• If you refer to the author or title of the work in your signal phrase, you do not need to include it at the end of the sentence.
• If quoting from the source, you must include the page number where the quote can be found in an end of text citation.
• Examples:
  • According to Smith (2013), "librarians are known for their friendly attitude and willingness to help others" (p. 3).
  • In a recent study (2016), researchers found that cats are in fact cooler than dogs (Delnero & Smith).

Guides, Videos & Tools

This video walks you through the basics of when and why to cite sources. Be sure to ask your professor which citation style you need to use for your assignments.