APA: Citing Books

See the APA Style Guide to Electronic Resources for examples of how to cite online articles, books and book chapters, meetings, websites, and more.  UAB Blazer ID and password are required to view this resource.

Books with 1 to 2 Authors/Editors:

Reference List:

Bollet, A. J. (2002). Civil war medicine: Challenges and triumphs.  Tucson, AZ: Galen Press.

Frumkin, H. (Ed.). (2005). Environmental health: From global to local. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

In-text Citation:

(Bollet, 2002)

(Frumkin, 2005)

 

Citing More Than One Resource at a Time:

When citing more than one resource at the same spot in the text, separate the citations with a semicolon. The citations must be in the same order as they appear on the reference list (i.e. alphabetical order).  For example:

(Bollet, 2002; Frumkin, 2005)

 

Books with 3 to 7 Authors/Editors:

Reference List:  

List all authors up to 7 authors.

Kaplan, C., Turner, G. S., & Warrell, D. A. (1986). Rabies: The facts.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bartlett, J. D., Jaanus, S. D., Fiscella, R. G., Holdeman, N. R., & Propkopich, C. L. (Eds.). (2008). Clinical ocular pharmacology. St. Louis, MO: Butterworth-Heinemann.

In-text Citation:

For 3 to 5 authors, list all authors for the 1st in-text citation; list only the 1st author followed by et al. in all subsequent in-text citations.

(Berman, Kotzur, & Oldham, 1986) then (Berman et al., 1986)

(Fellows, Denison, Fiscella, Lenchantin, & Nastanovich, 2008) then (Fellows et al., 2008)

For 6 or more authors, list only the first author, followed by et al.:

(Berman et al., 1998)

 

Books with 8 or More Authors/Editors:

Reference List: 

List the 6 authors, insert 3 ellipses, and add last author/editor name.

Walsh, D., Caraceni, A.T., Fainsinger, R., Foley, K., Glare, P., Goh, C., ...Radbruch, L. (2008). Palliative medicine. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier.

In-text Citation:

List the 1st author and et al.

(Walsh et al. 2008)

Your in-text citations will resemble other book citations or journal article citations.  Just be sure to provide the author or authors of the chapter rather than the editors of the book in the in-text citation. All the same rules for the number of authors included described above still apply.  

How to format a book chapter in your references list:

O'Mathúna, D. P., Fineout-Overholt, E., & Johnston, L. (2011). Critically appraising quantitative evidence for clinical decision making. In B. M. Melnyk & E. Gineout-Overholt (Eds.), Evidence-based practice in nursing healthcare: A guide to best practice (pp. 81-133). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters-Kluwer.

In-text citations of electronic books are formatted like print books (i.e. author, year).  If the book is available in print and online, designate what online edition of the book you used.

Example:

Ropper, A. H., & Samuels, M. A. (2005). Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology [Access Medicine version]. Retrieved from http://www.accessmedicine.com/features.aspx

Notice that the home page for Access Medicine is given, not a direct link to the book which would not work outside of the campus ip range.  As with e-journals, you should give the publisher or provider's home page for these types of materials.

If there is no print version, you do not need to include the bracketed description ([Access Medicine version]) in the example above.

You may need to use a direct quote from an e-book that does not have page numbers.  When there are no page numbers provided, the in-text citation must still indicate where in the text the quote can be located.  Indicate the section of the text using one of the following options:

• When paragraphs are numbered, simply provide the paragraph number following the author and year

• When paragraphs are not numbered, provide the section heading and the paragraph number within the section 

            (Smith & Jones, 1998, Methods section, para. 3).

Remember, this is only for direct quotes.  If you have paraphrased the material you likely only need to include the author and date.

EasyBib's barcode scanner pulls citation information and formats it in APA, MLA or Chicago style.  You can then e-mail the citation to yourself to copy and paste into your reference list.  Available for iOS, Android, and Google Apps.

                       

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