ASA – Citing Sociological Papers

ASA citation style is the style recommended and favored by the American Sociological Society for managing citations within sociological essays, reports and dissertations. ASA guidelines delineate in-text references, the use of footnotes and endnotes and the format of bibliographic citations. Its current incarnation is detailed in the American Sociological Association Style Guide (1997).

Main Text References

ASA follows basic Harvard-style referencing, using author-date-page notations enclosed in parentheses after the text to be referenced. Date-page notation is used after the author’s name if the name is used within the body of the text, itself. In cases where no date is available or for unpublished materials, use “n.d.” or “forthcoming” respectively.

For multiple authors up to three, list each name. For more than three authors, list only the first author and indicate there are additional authors with the phrase “et al” after the first author’s name. If multiple citations are referred to then a semicolon separates them from each other.

Footnote and Endnote Usage

Under ASA guidelines, footnotes and endnotes are not used for citations at all. They are used to explain a given passage that may seem vague, to amplify a point or concept, or for additional information that does not quite fit into the flow of the discussion underway. Notation references are document-wide under ASA with all endnotes inserted at the end of the document.

Building ASA Citations

ASA citations can be basically described using the following format:
Name. Date. “Article Title.” Source Name. Volume. Page (Count). Location: Publisher Name. Retrieved on Date. Database Name. (URL).

• Name
  This is the author’s name, listed by last name, except in the case of anonymous or unknown authors in an anthology, collected works or encyclopedic article. In those cases the editor’s name is used in place of the author’s name with an “ed.” notation following the name.
• Date
  This is the date of the articles copyright or publication. If unknown, use the abbreviation “n.d.” in its place. In the case of an article whose author and editor are both unknown, the date will actually follow the article’s title with the article placed in the bibliography alphabetically based on the article’s title. When a given author has multiple publications in a single year, the year is suffixed with a letter indicating either the order in which the documents were published or the order in which they appear in the bibliography.
• Article Title
  This is the title of the article exactly as published. If there is a subtitle, it is included but separated from the main title by a colon. In the case of unknown authors and editors, the article title will appear first in the bibliographic citation. The article title is always surrounded by quotation marks.
• Source Name
  This is the name of the book, periodical, encyclopedia, or website the information is drawn from or within which the cited article was found. The source name is always italicized under ASA guidelines.
• Volume Information
  Volume information is primarily supplied in the case of periodicals, though if the source has multiple versions or editions this must be given as well and is located here as well.
• Page Location and Size
  Indicating where the relevant article, chapter or quote is located within the source usually listed by the exact pages. However, articles are frequently broken within magazines and journals. In such case, the start page only is listed, followed by an overall page count enclosed in parentheses.
• Editor’s Name
  For collected works, anthologies and encyclopedic sources, the editor’s name is listed. If the article lacks an author’s name, the editor’s name is put in its place at the beginning of the citation instead of here. An “ed.” notation or “Edited by” is used to indicate the editor’s name.
• Location and Publisher’s Name
  List the publication location (city, state, nation) and the name of the publishing agency or company, separated by a colon with the location first.
• Retrieved Date
  For online resources, make a note of what day you visited or downloaded the resource. This is important because of the ever-changing nature of the Internet. Documents that may be located on a website may disappear the day after you view them or be dramatically edited or altered, causing the information reported to change or vanish, even if the page is still there.
• Database Name
  In the case of articles drawn from an electronic or online database, the database name and any version information should be noted. Also note any document identification number as your instructor or reviewer may need the information to lookup the source document within the database.
• URL
  In parentheses, list the exact Internet address of the web page, website, online journal or database you have cited.

The Bibliography

In the bibliography, all citations are listed in alphabetical order using the author’s name, editor’s name, or article title, depending upon which of these is located at the beginning of the citation. For multiple articles attributed to a single author or authors, try to place the citations in chronological order or, failing that, in alphabetical order based on the article or source title. Add a letter-suffix to the publication year in the order the citations are listed on this basis and use that year-suffix notation in all in-text references.

Additionally, remember to use a hanging format for the citations. The first line should be flush with the left hand margin with subsequent lines indented about a quarter inch to a half inch. If you are using annotations, indent the entire annotation by this amount to indicate it is a part of the preceding citation.

Final Words

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