The style guide published by the American Psychological Association is referred to as APA style. You're most likely to use it for papers written for psychology and sociology classes.
There are two major distinctions from the likely more familiar MLA style:
- APA papers use a title page, which MLA does not. You also have to include an abstract page summarizing your paper.
- In-text/parenthetical citations also include the year, e.g. (Smith, 2009, p. 15) compared to MLA's (Smith 15).
Our APA guide provides in-depth info about what your document and citations should look like, with examples galore and a premade Word document for you to download and use for your APA assignments. (Just double-check your professor's requirements: they sometimes want something custom.)
