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A reference has 4 elements: Author = Who is responsible for this work? Date = When was this work published? Title = What is this work called? Source = Where was this work found?
If any of this information is missing, follow these guidelines. |
"4Ws List. In: APA Style Citation Tutorial " by Sarah Adams & Debbie Feisst, U of A Libraries is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
Author is used to refer to any main person for the source. This includes editor(s), creator(s), director(s), or a group (ex. Yukon University).
For one author:
Author, A.A.
For two authors:
Author, A.A. & Author, B.B.
For three or more authors:
Author, A.A., Author, B.B. & Author, C.C.
Examples:
The date of publication of a work may be the year only, the year and month, the year, month and day, the year and season or a range of dates.
Examples:
Book
Bass, Rick. (2004). Caribou rising: defending the Porcupine herd, Gwich'in culture and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sierra Club Books.
Print magazine article
Cheney, T. (2020, July). Saving the right. Maclean's. 64-67.
The title identifies the work. If there is a subtitle, it follows after the main title, separated by a colon and a space.
Examples:
Book
Mapes, L. V. (2019). Witness tree: seasons of change with a century-old oak. University of Washington Press.
Chapter in a book
Sangster, J. (2016). Narrating the North: Sojourning women and travel writing. The iconic North: Cultural contructions of Aboriginal life in postwar Canada. (pp.33-68). UBC Press.
Print Magazine
Bruce T., Shultz M. (2020). Solar energy in the north?: It's now much cheaper than you think. Canadian Mining Magazine, Winter 2020. 43-45.
Need to cite a journal title but can only find the abbreviation? Search Abbreviations.com to find the full title.
Indicates where readers can retrieve the cited work.
Examples:
Journal article from a database
Samelius, G., & Alisauskas, R. T. (2001). Deterring arctic fox predation: the role of parental nest attendance by lesser snow geese. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 79(5), 861. https://doi.org/10.1139/z01-048
Webpage
Porcupine Caribou Management Board (n.d.). Harvest Management. https://www.pcmb.ca/harvest
For citing canadian government documents, follow the link to a guide created by SFU Library.
Have an unusual resource and do not know how to cite it?
Follow the link below to the APA Reference Examples which has 100+ examples of references and in-text citations
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
No author?
Skip the author element, and start the citation with the title.
Example:
Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary. (date). Title. Source.
No date?
Write "n.d." for no date.
Example:
Author. (n.d.). Title. Source.
No title?
Describe the work in square brackets.
Example:
Smith, John. (1841). [Letters]. Tulsa: Gilcrease Museum, https://collections.gilcrease.org/object/4026939 (02/21/2018).