Sociology Guide: ASA Citation Style

The American Sociological Association Style Guide is based on the Chicago Manual of Style Author-Date style. When something is not explained in the ASA Style Guide, turn to the Chicago Manual to find more inforamation.

References should be double-spaced although in the examples below they are not in the interestes of saving space.

Note that the punctuation shown below illustrates the punctuation of each element of the citation. E.g. there is a period after the authors.

Authors.

• 1st author has name inverted but others don't
          Shoemaker, Pamela J., James William Tankard, Jr., and Dominic L. Lasorsa
• Use full names unless the author has used only initials on the publication
• If there are multiple authors, use a comma after each author and use "and" before the last author
• Editors should be listed as authors with the addition or ed. (for a single editor) or eds. (for multiple editors) after the names

Publication Date.

Name of Publication.

• Use Headline Style Capitalization

Location of publisher:

• Always use the city, also use the state if the city is not widely known
• If the publisher is foreign, use the country as well (or instead of the state if the country does not have states)

Publisher's name.

Examples:

Braskamp, Larry A., and John C. Ory. 1994. Assessing Faculty Work: Enhancing Individual and Institutional Performance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Hagan, John, and Ruth D. Peterson, eds. 1995. Crime and Inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Humphreys, Laud. 1970. Tearoom Trade; Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co.

Note that the punctuation shown below illustrates the punctuation of each element of the citation. E.g. there is a period after the authors.

Authors.

• 1st author has name inverted but others don't
           Shoemaker, Pamela J., James William Tankard, Jr., and Dominic L. Lasorsa
• Use full names unless the author has used only initials on the publication
• If there are multiple authors, use a comma after each author and use "and" before the last author

Publication Date.

"Title of Article."

• Use Headline Style Capitalization

Pp. page numbers

In Name of Publication,

• Begin with the word "In"
• Use Headline Style Capitalization

edited by Editors.

• Begin with the words "edited by"
• 1st editor has name inverted but others don't
• Use full names unless the editors has used only initials on the publication
• If there are multiple editors, use a comma after each author and use "and" before the last author

Location of publisher:

• Always use the city, also use the state if the city is not widely known
• If the publisher is foreign, use the country as well (or instead of the state if the country does not have states)

Publisher's name.

Examples:

McAdam, Doug and Kelly Moore. 1989. "The Politics of Black Insurgency, 1930-1975." Pp. 255-85 in Violence in America: Protest, Rebellion, Reform, edited by T. R. Gurr. Newbury Park, CA: Sage publications.

Riley, Matilda White. 1985. "Women, Men, and the Lengthening Life Course." Pp. 333-47 in Gender and the Life Course, edited by A. S. Rossi. New York: Aldine.

Note that the punctuation shown below illustrates the punctuation of each element of the citation. E.g. there is a period after the authors.

Authors.

• 1st author has name inverted but others don't
          Shoemaker, Pamela J., James William Tankard, Jr., and Diminic L. Lasorsa
• Use full names unless the author has used only initials on the publication
• If there are multiple authors, use a comma after each author and use "and" before the last author

Year of publication.

"Title of Article."

• Use Headline Style Capitalization

Name of Publication.

• Use Headline Style Capitalization

Volume(Issue):Pages.

• No spaces!

Examples:

Christopher, Karen. 2005. "The Poverty Line Forty Years Later: Alternative Poverty Measures and Women's Lives." Race, Gender & Class 12(2):34-52.

Farrell, Amanda L., Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington. 2011. "Lethal Ladies: Revisiting What We Know About Female Serial Murderers." Homicide Studies 15(3):228-252.

Cite the same as if they were found in paper editions with the following changes:

• Omit the page numbers in citations
• Include URL and date of access
• For articles, include the DOI if there is one instead of the URL and date of access

Examples:

Conrad, Clifton F. 1978. "A Grounded Theory of Academic Change." Sociology of Education 51(2). Retrieved April 19, 2012 (http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=12549574&site=ehost-live).

Dunne, Ciaran. 2011. "The Place of the Literature Review in Grounded Theory Research." International Journal of Social Research Methodology 14(2). DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2010.494930

Citations within the text of the paper should be in parentheses as illustrated below.

Author's name

• If the author's name is in the text, leave it out of the ciation
         Reynolds lists the second criterion as... (2007:57)
• 2 authors - use the word and not an ampersand (Glaser and Strauss 1999)
• 3 or more authors - (Shoemaker, Tankard, and Lasorsa 2004)

Publication date

• No comma between the authors' names and the date)

Page number for quotes or references to specific passages

• Use a colon and no space between the date and the page number (Hochschild 1983:176)

A DOI or Digital Object Identifier is a unique code assigned to some digital objects, including articles, on the internet. The DOI is designed to be a persistent locator and will not change when a publisher's URL changes.

DOI's were first assigned in 2000 and are becoming more popular with online journal articles every year, but not every online article has a DOI. Only materials published by a participating publisher will be assigned a DOI.

Most citation styles give options for citing an article with a DOI and for citing an article without a DOI.

According to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, to plagiarize is "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own." When you use an idea, whether you completely rewrite the idea, paraphrase another, or quote the original, you must give credit to the originator of the idea using citations. Plagiarism at SDSU is governed by the SDSU Student Code 3.f.ii.1.

• Is it PLAGIARISM? (a flowchart) - Created and published by the Poynter Institute.

EndNote is software provided to SDSU students, faculty, and staff to manage source information and help create citations in papers as well as bibliographies. See the EndNote Guide for more information on this program.