Personal Finance: APA Style

When editors or teachers ask you to write in "APA style," they do not mean writing style. They are referring to the editorial style that many of the social and behavioral sciences have adopted to present written material in the field.

Editorial style consists of rules or guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. Editorial style concerns uniform use of such elements as

• punctuation and abbreviations
• construction of tables
• selection of headings
• citation of references
• presentation of statistics
• as well as many other elements that are a part of every manuscript

The American Psychological Association has established a style that it uses in all of the books and journals that it publishes. Many others working in the social and behavioral sciences have adopted this style as their standard as well.

APA's style rules and guidelines are set out in a reference book called The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Use this link to locate information in citing references.

© 2008 American Psychological Association

What is a digital object identifier, or DOI?

A digital object identifier (DOI) is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. The publisher assigns a DOI when your article is published and made available electronically.

All DOI numbers begin with a 10 and contain a prefix and a suffix separated by a slash. The prefix is a unique number of four or more digits assigned to organizations; the suffix is assigned by the publisher and was designed to be flexible with publisher identification standards.

We recommend that when DOIs are available, you include them for both print and electronic sources. The DOI is typically located on the first page of the electronic journal article, near the copyright notice. The DOI can also be found on the database landing page for the article. (American Psychological Association)

Purdue Owl APA Formatiing and Style Guide

This resource, revised according to the 6th edition, second printing of the APA manual, offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the reference page.

• Center the heading Reference List at the top of the page.
• Begin entry at the left margin, Indent one-half inch each additional lines of entry.
• Only the author’s last name and initials are used.
• After the 2nd author’s name and initials, use et al. to indicate the remaining authors in the article.*
• Alphabetize the list by the first word of the entry (usually the author's last name)..
• Use n.d. (no date) if the material is undated.
• Double-space the entire list, both between and within the entries.

Purdue Owl Citation Chart