Skip to Main Content

Occupational Therapy Research Guide

Tools for the OT Student

APA Style

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

APA Tutorial