Formatting a Reference Page

As a basic overview

• Write the word References centered on the page.  Do not bold the word.
• The reference page should be Times New Roman size 12 font and double spaced like the rest of the paper.
•  List all the references in alphabetical order by the author's last name .
• Any citation listed in the paper must be listed on the reference pages.
• Each reference is formatted with  a hanging indent.  This means that the second line of the reference is indented 5 spaces. 
• Any information that is cited in the paper needs to be listed on the reference page.
• Personal communication or classics do not have to be listed on the reference page.
• The reference page has the running header for the paper.

A sample reference page looks like this (but double spaced):

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
           Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.
APA.org (2011). APA style: basics of APA. Style Retrieved from http://flash1r.apa.org/apastyle
              /basics/index.htm
Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1999). Investing in teaching as a learning
            profession: Policy problems and prospects. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.),
            Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 376-411). San
            Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dickens, S. C. (2000). How to negotiate mergers in the corporate world. In W. Success, J. A. Boss
            & R. Supervisors (Eds.), Success in the corporate world (pp. 124-132 ). New York, NY:
            Winsome Books.
Franke, M. L., Carpenter, T. P., Levi, L. W., & Fennema, E. (1998). Teachers as learners: Developing
             understanding through children's thinking. San Diego, CA: American Educational Research
             Association.
Wood, D. (2007). Teachers' learning communities: Catalyst for change or a new infrastructure for
            the status quo? Teachers College Record, 109(3), 40.

Explanation of each part

Author

• The author portion of the reference begins with the first authors last name and uses only their initials and a period for first and middle name. 
• If there is more than one author, list the authors in the order that they are written in the work.  Each author is separated by a comma and the last author has an "&" sign before their name. 
• If there is no clear author such as the reference posted for APA.org, you use the organization. 

Year

• The year goes inside parenthesis with a period after.

Title

• If the title is the name of a book or an article on a website- italicize.  If it is the name of an article do not italicize because the journal will be italicized.  
• Capitalize proper nouns, the first word of the title and the first word after a semicolon.

Publisher

• First list the city and state in this format City, ST:  The city name is followed by a comma.  The state is only two letter abbreviation and a colon follows.
• After the colon, the name of the publisher is written.

Journals

•  If the reference is a journal article, the title of the article is followed by the name of the journal in italics, comma, the number of the publication, comma, and then the page numbers with a period at the end.
• See Wood reference example provided above.

Edited Books

• This has the title of the section in the book followed by a period.  The word "In" and the publisher's name followed by "(Eds),"
• The title of the book then follows with the page number in parenthesis and the city of the publisher 
• See Darling-Hammond and Dickens reference example provided above.

Websites

• Websites have the author, year, title format that is the same.  After the title, it should state "Retrieved from" and then the URL for the information referencing.
• See APA reference example provided above.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010).  Publication manual of the American Psychological

         Association (6th ed.).