ASA style
Encyclopedia
American Sociological Association
(ASA) style is a widely accepted format for writing university research papers that specifies such the arrangement and punctuation of footnote
s and bibliographies
. Standards for ASA style are specified in the ASA Style Guide
, which is published by the American Sociological Association
, the main scholarly organization for academic sociologists
in the United States
. The ASA Style Guide is designed to aid authors in preparing manuscripts for ASA journals and publications.
. As with APA style, the general format for citing references is parenthetical referencing
. All references are to be included at the end of the paper in a section titled "References," rather than "Works Cited" as in the MLA style. Also, unlike the MLA style, parenthetical references are to include the year of publication. This "author-date" system is a readily recognizable feature of the ASA style. This emphasis on dates is carried over in the references section, where the date is the first piece of information to follow the author's or authors' name(s).
A second distinguishing feature of ASA style is the limited use of footnotes and endnotes. As noted in the ASA Style Guide, footnotes are to be used sparingly in order to "cite material of limited availability or to add information presented in a table" (Salinas 2008). The full citation for the preceding parenthetical reference would appear in the "References" section as follows:
programs, including Endnote, Procite, Zotero, RefWorks, and so forth, making the formatting of references a fairly straightforward task.
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
(ASA) style is a widely accepted format for writing university research papers that specifies such the arrangement and punctuation of footnote
Footnote
A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...
s and bibliographies
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
. Standards for ASA style are specified in the ASA Style Guide
Style guide
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field...
, which is published by the American Sociological Association
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
, the main scholarly organization for academic sociologists
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The ASA Style Guide is designed to aid authors in preparing manuscripts for ASA journals and publications.
General Features
The ASA style is closely related in appearance and function to the more popular APA styleAPA style
American Psychological Association Style is a set of rules that authors use when submitting papers for publications in APA journals. The APA states that they were developed to assist reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and to "move the idea...
. As with APA style, the general format for citing references is parenthetical referencing
Parenthetical referencing
Parenthetical referencing, also known as Harvard referencing, is a citation style in which partial citations are enclosed within parentheses and embedded in the text, either within or after a sentence, as opposed to the footnote style...
. All references are to be included at the end of the paper in a section titled "References," rather than "Works Cited" as in the MLA style. Also, unlike the MLA style, parenthetical references are to include the year of publication. This "author-date" system is a readily recognizable feature of the ASA style. This emphasis on dates is carried over in the references section, where the date is the first piece of information to follow the author's or authors' name(s).
A second distinguishing feature of ASA style is the limited use of footnotes and endnotes. As noted in the ASA Style Guide, footnotes are to be used sparingly in order to "cite material of limited availability or to add information presented in a table" (Salinas 2008). The full citation for the preceding parenthetical reference would appear in the "References" section as follows:
Software Support
ASA style is supported by most major reference management softwareReference management software
Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations . Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies,...
programs, including Endnote, Procite, Zotero, RefWorks, and so forth, making the formatting of references a fairly straightforward task.
Further reading
- American Sociological Association. 2007. Style Guide. 3rd edition. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. ISBN 978-0912764306.
External links
- ASA Formatting in Sociology (from Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPurdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
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