

The reference entry for that quotation would then appear on the references page in proper APA fashion with a hanging indent. The last name of the author in your in-text citation matches the last name on the first line of your entry, making it easy for a reader to find.įor example, you might have an in-text citation that looks like the following:Īccording to an article published in The Formatting Magazine on June 8, 2012, "APA formatting is a fascinating topic" (Pickens, pg.

If you have in-text citations for authors by the last names of Hubbard, Pickens, and Airdale, you'll most likely, unless you interviewed your sources, have complete bibliographic information for those three authors listed on your references page in alphabetical order. This formatting allows a reader to cross-reference in-text citations with the complete bibliographic information included on a references page. The hanging indent on an APA references page serves a very important purpose. They stipulate that reference entries should be double-spaced, and the "APA publishes references in a hanging indent format, meaning that the first line of each reference is set flush left and subsequent lines are indented" (2010, pg. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association states that a list of references should begin on a new page of your paper with the word "References" centered at the top of the page.

It's when the top line of a paragraph, or in this case a reference entry, is aligned left, while the rest of the lines in the paragraph or entry are indented. Let all of your source authors "hang out."Ī hanging indent is what most students might think of as a reverse indent.
