Citing Articles in APA Style

Lesson Plan - Get It!

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Magazines, journals, and newspapers are all considered periodicals, meaning that they are published at regular intervals, or periodically.

In APA, articles from print periodicals share the same general reference page citation format, but there are some slight differences for each type of periodical, which is why you need to know if you are using an article from a magazine, newspaper, or journal when you create your reference page citations.

Online articles are also cited the same way as print articles; the only difference is that the URL (web address) is added at the end of the citation and is preceded by the words, "Retrieved from," so the reader knows the article was located online and not in print.

Citations for articles in periodicals follow the same rules as books for the author's name(s). An article name is treated the same way as a chapter title on the reference page. A book title and the title of the periodical also follow the same formatting. If you need to refresh the formatting for author's name(s), chapter titles, or book titles, you can refer to the handout you printed from the previous Related Lesson in our APA Reference Page Citations series, found in the right-hand sidebar.

To learn how to cite an article from a magazine, newspaper, or journal, print the APA Article Citations handout found in Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar. Read over the notes carefully and observe the examples of each form of citation. After studying the notes, answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper without looking at the handout:

• How might the date for a scholarly journal article look different from the date for a magazine article?
• What is the difference between the way the page number is written for a magazine article and a newspaper article?
• Which type of source is likely to have all of its citation, a scholarly journal or a magazine?
• What two pieces of information are italicized for magazine and journal articles?

After you've answered the questions, share your responses with your parent or teacher.

You can use the handout to check your answers and see if you were correct. Once you've checked your answers, move on to the Got It? section to see citations for periodical articles being created, and practice creating your own citations.