Examples of Citations
Books
The basic form for a book entry includes…
1. Author’s last name, followed by a comma and author’s first name and middle initial, ending with a period.
2. Year of publication followed by a period.
3. Title of book italicized ending with a period. Follow with edition number if 2nd ed. or later.
4. City and state of publication, followed by a colon and name of publisher, ending with a period.
Book with One Author
Bergesen, Albert. 2006. The Depth of Shallow Culture: The High Art of Shoes, Movies, Novels, Monsters, and Toys. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Book with Two Authors
Mouer, Ross and Hirosuke Kawanishi. 2005. A Sociology of Work in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter in Book
Holley, P.D. and D.E. Wright, Jr. 2006. "A Sociology of Rib Joints." Pp. 46-53 in McDonaldization: The Reader, edited by George Ritzer. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Book with No Author (List books alphabetically by the first significant word in the title.)
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 2005. 11th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Journal Articles
The basic form for a journal article includes…
1. Author’s last name, followed by a comma and the first name and middle initial ending with a period.
2. Year of publication followed by a period.
3. Title of article in “quotations,” ending with a period inside the closing quotation mark.
4. Title of journal in italics, no period following.
5. Volume number followed by issue number in parentheses, followed by a colon, page number(s) and period.
6. For articles retrieved from a commercial database, in parentheses identify the database source and date of retrieval: (Retrieved from [name of database] on [date of retrieval].)
Print Journal Article with One Author
Garcia, Alma M. 1998. "An Intellectual Odyssey: Chicana/Chicano Studies Moving Into the Twenty-first Century." Journal of American Ethnic History 18(1):109.
Print Journal Article with Two or More Authors
Exum, William H., Robert J. Menges, Bari Watkins, and Patricia Berglund. 1984. "Making It at the Top: Women and Minority Faculty in the Academic Labor Market." American Behavioral Scientist 27(3):301-324.
Journal Article from a Commercial Database
Brunson, Rod K. and Jody Miller. 2006. “Gender, Race, and Urban Policing: The Experience of African American Youths.” Gender and Society 20(4):531-552. (Retrieved from Sage Journals Online on May 18, 2009.)
Newspaper and Magazine Articles
The basic form for a newspaper or magazine entry includes…
1. Author’s last name, followed by a comma and the first name and middle initial, ending with a period.
2. Year of publication followed by a period.
3. Title of article in “quotations,” ending with a period inside the closing quotation mark.
4. Name of newspaper/magazine in italics, followed by a comma.
5. Month and date of publication followed by a comma.
6.. Page number of article within the publication, designated by “pp.” and ending with a period.
7. For articles retrieved from an online database, in parentheses identify the database source and date of retrieval: (Retrieved from [name of database] on [date of retrieval].)
Print Magazine Article
Jana, Reena. 2000. "Preventing Culture Clashes - As the IT Workforce Grows More Diverse, Managers Must Improve Awareness Without Creating Inconsistency." InfoWorld, April 24, pp. 95.
Newspaper Article from a Commercial Database
Harris, Gardiner. 2007. "Teenage Birth Rate Rises For First Time Since '91." New York Times, December 6, pp. 26. (Retrieved from Lexis/Nexis Academic on January 12, 2008.)
Electronic Resources
Journal Article from a Commercial Database
Sweeten, Gary, Shawn D. Bushway, and Raymond Paternoster. 2009. “Does Dropping Out of School Mean Dropping Into Delinquency?” Criminology 47(1):47-91. (Retrieved from Wiley Interscience on April 23, 2009.)
Information Posted on a Web Site
Spalter-Roth, Roberta and William Erskine. 2007. “Race and Ethnicity in the Sociology Pipeline.” Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Retrieved January 9, 2008 (http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Minorities_Career_Pipeline.pdf).
Web-Based Journal Article
Smith, Herman W. and Takako Nomi. 2000. "Is Amae the Key to Understanding Japanese Culture?" Electronic Journal of Sociology 5:1. Retrieved May 5, 2000 (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol005.001/smith-nomi.html).
Web Version of Newspaper
Blank, Rebecca M. 2008. “How We Measure Poverty.” Los Angeles Times, September 15. Retrieved January 7, 2009 (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-blank15-2008sep15,0,7811609.story).
Other
Government Documents
U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2004. Crime in the United States, 2003: Uniform Crime Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. (Also available at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm.)
Dissertations and Theses
Valencia, Albert. 1995. "An Examination of Selected Characteristics of Mexican-American Battered Women and Implications for Service Providers." Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Education, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA.
ASA Format
The American Sociological Association Style is intended for use by authors preparing manuscripts for publication in ASA journals. This handout is intended for students who are instructed to use ASA style when writing research papers. Consult the American Sociological Association Style Guide for more detailed information (Information Desk HM586 .A54 1997).
Citations in the text include the last name of the author(s) and year of publication. Include page numbers when quoting directly from a work or referring to specific passages. Identify subsequent citations of the same source in the same way as the first. Examples follow:
If the author’s name is in the text, follow it with the publication year in parentheses:
…in another study by Duncan (1959).
If the author’s name is not in the text, enclose the last name and publication year in parentheses:
…whenever it occurred (Gouldner 1963).
Pagination follows the year of publication after a colon, with no space between the colon and the
page number:
…Kuhn (1970:71).
Note: This is the preferred ASA style. Older forms of text citations are not acceptable: (Kuhn
1970, p. 71).
Give both last names for joint authors:
… (Martin and Bailey 1988).
If a work has three authors, cite all three last names in the first citation in the text; thereafter, use
et al. in the citation. If a work has more than three authors, use et al. in the first citation and in
all subsequent citations.
First citation for a work with three authors:…had been lost (Carr, Smith, and Jones 1962).
Later…(Carr et al. 1962)
