is style sheet has been provided to assist students
studying sociology in properly citing and referencing their
papers and essays. e information in this document is
taken from the American Sociological Association Style
Guide (4th ed., 2010). We highly encourage students who
plan to major in sociology or pursue their masters degree
in sociology to purchase the complete Style Guide, which
features sections on editorial styles, mechanics of style,
guidelines for organizing and presenting content, and more
detailed information on referencing your scholarly sources.
Information about the ASA Style Guide can be found at
www.asanet.org/journals/guides.cfm.
Plagiarism
e ASA has a rm commitment to full and proper attri-
bution and authorship credit, as set forth in the ASA Code
of Ethics.
(a) In publications, presentations, teaching practice, and
service, sociologists explicitly identify credit, and refer-
ence the author when they take data or material verbatim
from another person’s written work, whether it is pub-
lished, unpublished, or electronically available.
(b) In their publications, presentations, teaching, prac-
tice, and service, sociologists provide acknowledgment of
and reference to the use of others’ work, even if the work
is not quoted verbatim or paraphrased, and they do not
present others’ work as their own whether it is published,
unpublished, or electronically available.
Text Citations
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 specic passages. Identify
subsequent citations of the same source in the same way as
the rst. Examples follow:
If the author’s name is in the text, follow it with the pub-
lication 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 aer a colon,
with no space between the colon and the page number:
…Kuhn (1970:71).
Note: is 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
rst citation in the text; thereaer, use et al. in the citation.
If a work has more than three authors, use et al. in the rst
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)
If a work cited was reprinted from a version published
earlier, list the earliest publication date in
brackets, followed by the publication date of the recent
version used.
…Veblen ([1899] 1979) stated that…
Separate a series of references with semicolons. List
the series in alphabetical or date order, but be consistent
throughout the manuscript.
… (Green 1995; Mundi 1987; Smith and Wallop 1989).
Reference Lists
A reference list follows the text and footnotes in a sepa-
rate section headed References. All references cited in the
text must be listed in the reference section, and vice versa.
It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that publication
information for each entry is complete and correct.
◆ References should be double-spaced.
◆ List all references in alphabetical order by rst author’s
last name
Quick Tips
for ASA Style