ASA Citation Generator
Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted ASA (American Sociological Association) 7th-edition reference, plus the matching in-text citation, in seconds. Built for the seminar papers, literature reviews and dissertations that follow the ASA Style Guide — with a live preview you can copy straight into your References list.
Used in: Sociology, criminology, social work and the wider social sciences — ASA is the house style for the American Sociological Association journals and the format most often required in those programmes.
Enter your source
Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.
Source type
A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.
Author
Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.
Year published
Add an author or a title and your formatted ASA citation appears here instantly.
Author–date in parentheses with the year and any page run together by a colon: (Tulving and Thomson 1973:352), or (Tulving and Thomson 1973) with no page. Three or more authors collapse to the first author + “et al.”.
A “References” list, alphabetical by the first author’s surname with a hanging indent. The first author is inverted with full given names and the rest are in natural order; article and chapter titles take title case in quotation marks; journal, book and newspaper titles are italicised in title case.
- Use “and”, never “&”, between author names in the in-text citation and the reference list.
- The journal locator runs together with no spaces: Volume(Issue):Pages, e.g. 80(5):352-373.
- For three or more authors, give the first author + “et al.” in every in-text citation, but list every author in the reference entry.
- Cite a book chapter with “Pp. <pages> in <Book Title>, edited by <Editors>.”
- Attach a page to a direct quotation in text with a colon and no space: (Kuhn 1996:23).
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ASA referencing at a glance
Sociology, criminology, social work and the wider social sciences — ASA is the house style for the American Sociological Association journals and the format most often required in those programmes.
Spell out “and”
ASA joins author names with the word “and” — never an ampersand — in both the reference entry and the in-text citation. Full given names are preferred to initials wherever the source supplies them.
Headline (title) case
Every title takes title case. Article, chapter and web-page titles sit in double quotation marks; books, journals, newspapers and reports take title case and are italicised.
Label-free locator
The journal locator runs together with no spaces and no labels — 80(5):352-373 — dropping “Vol.”, “No.” and “pp.” and using a hyphen rather than an en dash.
The (Author Year:page) form
ASA is an author–date system, but its in-text marker is leaner than APA's: no comma after the surname, no “p.” label, and a page attached to the year by a colon with no space. Match the author count to the right pattern.
Whole-work reference
When you are pointing at a study as a whole, give just the surname and year in parentheses, with no comma between them.
(Tulving and Thomson 1973)Pin-pointing a page
For a direct quotation or a specific claim, attach the page to the year with a colon and no space — this colon is the single most recognisable feature of ASA in text.
(Kuhn 1996:23)| Authors | Whole work | With a page |
|---|---|---|
| One author | (Kuhn 1996) | (Kuhn 1996:23) |
| Two authors | (Tulving and Thomson 1973) | (Tulving and Thomson 1973:352) |
| Three or more | (Tulving et al. 1973) | (Tulving et al. 1973:352) |
Inside an ASA journal reference
The journal article is the backbone of a sociology reference list. Read it left to right — each numbered segment is one rule you can reuse on every article you cite.
- 1Author(s)
Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson.Invert only the first author (surname, then full given name); list later authors in normal order with “and” before the last. The element ends in a full stop.
- 2Year
1973.The publication year sits in its own sentence after the author, followed by a full stop.
- 3Article title
“Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.”Title case inside double quotation marks, with the closing full stop placed inside the quotes.
- 4Journal name
Psychological ReviewThe journal name is italicised, in title case, with no comma after it.
- 5Volume(Issue):Pages
80(5):352-373.The locator runs together with no internal spaces — Volume(Issue):Pages — and uses a hyphen, not an en dash.
ASA conventions for sociology
A handful of conventions separate ASA from the APA style it most resembles. The colon-before-page marker is the giveaway — so it gets its own magnified breakdown, alongside the block-quote, data-source and reference-list rules sociology coursework relies on.
No comma after it — the surname and year sit side by side with a single space.
Joins the year straight to the page, with no space on either side — the ASA signature.
The bare page number — no “p.”, no “page”, no “pp.” before it.
(Kuhn 1996:23)Surname, space, year, colon, page. Compact and label-free.
(Kuhn, 1996, p. 23)APA adds commas and a “p.” label — a habit worth unlearning when a paper asks for ASA.
(Kuhn 1996:23).Psychological Review 80(5):352-373 — the italicised journal name, then Volume(Issue):Pages run together with no spaces, no “Vol.”, no “No.”, no “pp.”, and a hyphen rather than an en dash in the page range.ASA reference templates for sociology sources
One row per source you are likely to cite in a sociology paper: the skeleton pattern with placeholders, and a fully formatted ASA 7th-edition example you can mirror.
| Source | Template & example |
|---|---|
| Journal article | Author. Year. “Title of Article.” Journal Name Volume(Issue):Pages.Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973. “Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.” Psychological Review 80(5):352-373. |
| Book | Author. Year. Title of Book. Edition. Place: Publisher.Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. |
| Book chapter | Author. Year. “Title of Chapter.” Pp. xx-xx in Title of Book, edited by Editor. Place: Publisher.McGann, Jerome J. 1997. “The Rationale of Hypertext.” Pp. 19-46 in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory, edited by David C. Greetham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| Website | Author. Year. “Title of Page.” Website Name. Retrieved Month Day, Year (URL).Cherry, Kendra. 2022. “How Human Memory Works.” Verywell Mind. Retrieved January 15, 2024 (https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000). |
| Newspaper article | Author. Year. “Title of Article.” Newspaper Name, Month Day (URL).Carrington, Damian. 2021. “World Leaders Strike Landmark Climate Deal at COP26.” The Guardian, November 13 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal). |
| Online video | Uploader. Year. “Title of Video.” Platform. (URL).Veritasium. 2020. “The Science of Thermodynamics.” YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk). |
| Conference paper | Author. Year. “Title of Paper.” Presented at the Conference Name, Place.Vaswani, Ashish, and Noam Shazeer. 2017. “Attention Is All You Need.” Presented at the Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA. |
| Thesis / dissertation | Author. Year. “Title of Thesis.” Description, Institution (URL).Doe, Jane A. 2019. “Essays on Monetary Policy and Inflation Expectations.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford (https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:example). |
| Report | Organisation. Year. Title of Report Number. Place (URL).World Health Organization. 2023. World Health Statistics 2023: Monitoring Health for the SDGs No. 24. Geneva, Switzerland (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323). |
For an edited-book chapter, note the distinctive ASA pattern: the chapter title in quotation marks, then Pp. 19-46 in the italicised book title, with the editors following “edited by” in normal name order.
Common ASA mistakes — and the fix
Most slips come from importing an APA habit into an ASA paper. Each pair shows the wrong form, the corrected form, and the rule behind the change.
Tulving, Endel, & Donald M. Thomson. 1973.Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973.Why: ASA spells out “and” between author names — it never uses an ampersand, in either the reference or the in-text citation.
Tulving, E., and D. M. Thomson. 1973.Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973.Why: ASA uses full given names rather than initials wherever the source supplies them.
Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973. “Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.”Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973. “Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.”Why: ASA uses headline (title) case for titles, not sentence case — capitalise all principal words.
Psychological Review, 80(5), 352–373.Psychological Review 80(5):352-373.Why: The locator runs together with no commas and no spaces, joins the pages with a colon, and uses a hyphen rather than an en dash.
Psychological Review, Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 352-373.Psychological Review 80(5):352-373.Why: ASA drops the “Vol.”, “No.” and “pp.” labels entirely — the numbers carry the meaning on their own.
(Tulving and Thomson, 1973, p. 352)(Tulving and Thomson 1973:352)Why: ASA in-text citations take no comma after the surname and attach a page to the year with a colon and no space.
A sample ASA reference list
Your References page lists every cited source alphabetically by the first author's surname, double-spaced, with a hanging indent — the first line flush left and every following line indented.
Carrington, Damian. 2021. “World Leaders Strike Landmark Climate Deal at COP26.” The Guardian, November 13 (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal).Cherry, Kendra. 2022. “How Human Memory Works.” Verywell Mind. Retrieved January 15, 2024 (https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000).Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. 1973. “Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory.” Psychological Review 80(5):352-373.
Note how the web entries close with a retrieval date and the URL in parentheses, while a print book and a journal article carry no such note — the hanging indent shown here is illustrative, so set it through your word processor rather than typing spaces.
ASA Citation Generator — questions
Which ASA edition does this generator use?+
It follows the American Sociological Association Style Guide, 7th edition, the current standard for ASA journals and for sociology coursework. ASA is an author–date system: a short citation in the running text points to a full entry in an alphabetical “References” list at the end.
How does an ASA in-text citation work?+
Put the author’s surname and the year in parentheses, with no comma between them: (Tulving 1973). For two authors, join them with “and”: (Tulving and Thomson 1973). To point to a specific page, add it after the year with a colon and no space: (Kuhn 1996:23).
When do I use “et al.” in ASA?+
For a work with three or more authors, give the first author’s surname followed by “et al.” in every in-text citation — for example, (Tulving et al. 1973). In the References list, however, you spell out every author in full; the truncation applies only to the in-text form.
How do I order names in an ASA reference?+
Invert the first author so the surname comes first (“Tulving, Endel”), then give every remaining author in normal order, with “and” before the last name: “Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson.” Use full given names rather than initials wherever you have them, and use “and” rather than an ampersand.
Should ASA titles be in title case or sentence case?+
ASA uses headline (title) case for titles. Article, chapter and web-page titles take title case inside double quotation marks; book, journal, newspaper and report titles take title case and are italicised. This tool applies the correct case and styling to each field automatically.
How do I format the volume, issue and pages of a journal article?+
ASA runs the locator together with no internal spaces: the italicised journal name, then Volume(Issue):Pages — for example, Psychological Review 80(5):352-373. Note that ASA uses a hyphen in the page range rather than an en dash, and there is no “pp.” label.
How do I cite a chapter from an edited book in ASA?+
Give the chapter title in quotation marks, then the page range with the “Pp.” label and the book details: “Pp. 19-46 in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory, edited by David C. Greetham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.” The book title is italicised and the editors follow “edited by” in normal name order.
How should I present a URL for an online source?+
For a web page, end the entry with the retrieval date and the URL in parentheses: “Retrieved January 15, 2024 (https://…).” For a source that already carries a stable address, such as an online report or thesis, you can simply place the URL in parentheses at the end of the entry.
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