ASA Style

After your text and footnotes, ASA style a Reference list that alphabetically lists all of the sources that you quoted, paraphrased, or summarized. Every source listed on the References page should correspond to one of your in-text citations. 

Citing sources gives credit back to the original author when you use someone else's words and ideas in your research paper.  The research process requires background information to develop the vocabulary, data, and details (who, what, where, why, and how) about your topic, so sometimes there are sources that you learned from but did not actually use in your writing. These sources do not go on your References page. Only sources that were quoted, paraphrased, or summarized should be on your References page.

An ASA style Reference List should: 

• Begin with the level one heading: REFERENCES
• Double spaced like the rest of the paper
• References should have a hanging indent
• Alphabetical order
• All words should be capitalized except for prepositions (of, into, between, through, across), articles (a, an, the), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or). The only exception being if a preposition, article, or conjunction is the first word of the subtitle, then the word should be capitalized.