5.4 APA & Chicago Documentation: Citations, Notes & References

APA & Chicago Documentation: Citations, Notes & References

Quick Overview: While MLA is the prevailing standard in humanities coursework, the CLEP College Composition exam tests your broader bibliographic literacy across disciplines. Multiple-choice questions frequently contrast MLA with the American Psychological Association (APA 7th edition) style (the universal standard in the social sciences, business, and nursing) and the Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition, published September 2024) and its Turabian student adaptation (the standard in history, philosophy, and professional publishing). Understanding the differing mechanical rationales of these styles—such as APA's Author-Date architecture and Chicago's Notes and Bibliography system—is essential for maximizing your multiple-choice score.

Citation styles do not differ arbitrarily; their formatting choices reflect the fundamental epistemological values of their respective disciplines. In literature (MLA), the exact page of text is paramount. In psychology and economics (APA), the recency of the study (year of publication) is vital. In historical scholarship (Chicago), extensive footnotes provide archival provenance without interrupting the author's narrative flow.

Social Science Rigor: APA Documentation (7th Edition)

Developed by behavioral scientists to ensure rigorous reporting of empirical studies, APA style prioritizes publication dates and standardized reporting of statistical results.

In-Text Citations: Author-Date Architecture

The hallmark of APA in-text documentation is the Author-Date formula. Whenever you cite an author's work, the year of publication must accompany their name:

• Parenthetical Citation (Author not in text): Both the surname and publication year appear in parentheses, separated by a comma:

  Cognitive dissonance generates measurable neurological stress responses (Festinger, 1957).

• Narrative Citation (Author in text): If the author's name is part of the sentence, the publication year appears in parentheses immediately following the surname:

  Festinger (1957) demonstrated that cognitive dissonance generates measurable neurological stress responses.

• Direct Quotation Requirement: When quoting directly in APA, you must include a page number (preceded by the abbreviation p. for a single page or pp. for a page range) or a paragraph number (para.) for unpaginated web materials:

  Kahneman (2011) observed that "System 1 runs automatically and quickly, with little or no effort" (p. 20). *Or parenthetically: "System 1 runs automatically and quickly, with little or no effort" (Kahneman, 2011, p. 20).

Multiple Authors and Institutional Attribution in APA 7

• Two Authors:
  • In parenthetical citations, connect names with an ampersand (&): (Vygotsky & Piaget, 1998).
  • In narrative text, spell out the word "and": According to Vygotsky and Piaget (1998)...
• Three or More Authors: Under APA 7th edition, any source with three or more authors is immediately shortened to the first author's surname followed by et al. from the very first citation:

  (Bandura et al., 2019) or Bandura et al. (2019) discovered... (Note: Older APA 6th edition rules required listing up to five authors on first mention; APA 7th edition eliminated this requirement).

• Institutional / Corporate Authors: If the work is published by a government agency or association, spell out the full name on first mention, followed by the acronym in brackets; subsequent citations use the acronym alone:
  • First citation: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022)
  • Subsequent citations: (CDC, 2022)

The References Page: Formatting and Typographical Rules

The bibliography in APA style is titled References (centered and bolded at the top of the page). APA reference entries exhibit three distinctive formatting rules that frequently appear on the CLEP exam:

1. Inverted Author Names with Initials: First and middle names are never spelled out. Authors are listed by last name followed by initials: Smith, J. D., & Taylor, R. K.
2. Year in Parentheses: The publication date appears in parentheses immediately following the author(s): (2023).
3. Sentence-Case Capitalization for Book and Article Titles: This is the single most frequently tested APA rule on the CLEP exam. In book titles and journal article titles, capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle (following a colon), and proper nouns. All other words are lowercase:

   Thinking, fast and slow. (Book title in sentence case) "The impact of cognitive fatigue on pediatric diagnosis: A longitudinal study." (Article title in sentence case)

4. Title Case for Periodicals: In contrast to article titles, the name of the academic journal is formatted in standard title case (capitalizing all major words) and italicized, followed by the volume number (in italics) and the issue number in parentheses (not italicized):

   Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 512–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000987

Historical Precision: Chicago / Turabian Style (18th Edition)

The Chicago Manual of Style (and its student adaptation, Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations) offers two distinct citation systems:

1. The Notes and Bibliography (NB) System: The preferred format in history, art history, religious studies, and literature.
2. The Author-Date System: A format mirroring APA, primarily used in the natural and physical sciences.

The Notes and Bibliography (NB) System

In the Chicago NB system, borrowed material is marked in the text with a superscript Arabic numeral placed after the punctuation mark. This numeral corresponds to a footnote at the bottom of the page or an endnote at the conclusion of the chapter:

Text: The Lincoln-Douglas debates catalyzed a profound realignment in midwestern party loyalties during the antebellum crisis.¹

Full Notes vs. Shortened Notes

Chicago distinguishes between the first time a source is cited and subsequent citations:

• First Citation (Full Note): Provides the full publication details, with publisher and date enclosed in parentheses, followed by the specific page:

  Footnote 1: 1. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W. W. Norton, 2010), 142.

• Subsequent Citations (Shortened Note): Chicago discourages the Latin abbreviation "Ibid." (from ibidem, "in the same place") because it obscures the source’s identity, saves no space, and confuses readers in electronic formats that display one note at a time. The 18th edition recommends a shortened note instead: the author’s last name, a shortened form of the title (abbreviated when the title runs to more than four words), and the page number:

  Footnote 2: 2. Foner, The Fiery Trial, 155.

• The Chicago Bibliography Page: At the end of the manuscript, a freestanding Bibliography lists all works in alphabetical order. Unlike footnotes (which use normal author order and commas), the bibliography inverts the author’s name and separates major elements with periods:

  Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W. W. Norton, 2010.

Edition trap for 2026 test-takers: Many free Chicago handouts still show the 17th edition. The most visible change in the 18th edition is that a place of publication is no longer required for books published since 1900 — write (W. W. Norton, 2010), not (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010) — unless the city is needed to distinguish two publishers with the same name. The 18th edition also lists up to six authors in a bibliography entry (first three plus et al. beyond six) and formats DOIs as https://doi.org/... URLs rather than the retired doi: prefix.

Cross-Style Synthesis: MLA vs. APA vs. Chicago

CLEP multiple-choice items frequently test your ability to recognize which convention belongs to which style guide. The following comparative matrix synthesizes the essential distinctions:

Comparative Citation Matrix across MLA, APA, and Chicago