Comparing APA and AMA Style: Authors and Titles

Author Names in the Text of the Paper

• When citing an article with one author, refer to the author by last name.
• When citing an article with two authors, connect their last names with an ampersand (&).  Example: Smith & Dobson
• When citing an article with three or more authors, simply list the first author's name followed by et al.  Example: "A study by Hernandez et al. demonstrated that..."

Author Names in the References List

• Invert author names, or put the last name first.  Use initials for first and middle (if applicable) names.  Use one space and one period between initials.  A comma will follow the last name.  Example: Slack, A. J. 
• Multiple Authors: Up to 20 authors must be listed.  Place an ampersand (&) between the last two author names.
• More than 20 authors:  List authors from the first to the 19th, insert an elipsis (or three consecutive periods) and the name of the final author listed.
• For corporate or organizational authors, spell out the entire name.  Example:  Centers for Disease Control
• When no author can be identified (common with websites), omit the author and begin the References list entry with the title of the work

Editors

• For an edited work, format the name as above and add (Ed.) after the name.  For multiple editors, use (Eds.)

• Book titles are italicized and appear in sentence case (capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle (after a colon), and proper nouns).
• Book chapter titles appear in sentence case with no other formatting (not italicized or bold, etc).
• Journal titles are italicized and written using title case--this means important words are capitalized.
• Article titles are written using sentence case and no other formatting.
• Webpages and websites are italicized and written using sentence case.

Author Names in the Text of the Paper

• Refer to authors by last name.
• When citing a source with two authors, DO NOT use an ampersand (&), use the word "and."  Example: Smith and Dobson
• When citing a source with three or more authors, use the first author's surname followed by "et al"  DO NOT use the possessive of et al "Doe et al's research showed...."  Instead, rephrase your sentence to eliminate this.

Author Names in the References List

• Invert author names, or put the last name first.  Use initials for first and middle names (if applicable).  DO NOT use spaces or any punctuation with initials.  A comma will follow the last name.  Example: Slack, AJ
• Multiple authors: All author names should be included UNLESS there are more than six.  In this case, list the first three authors followed by et al.
• For corporate or organizational authors, spell out the entire name.  Example: Centers for Disease Control
• When no author can be identified (common with websites), omit the author and begin the Reference list entry with the title of the work.

Editors

• For an edited work, format the names as above and add "ed." or "eds." after the name(s).

• Book titles are italicized and written in title case (all major words).  Also capitalize 2-letter verbs like Be or Is
• For journal articles and parts of books (chapters), only capitalize the first word, proper names, names of clinical trials or study groups, and abbreviations that would normally be capitalized.  The first word of journal article subtitles are NOT capitalized.
• Journal titles are abbreviated and italicized in title case.
• In all titles, capitalize and use italics for scientific names of organisms.
• Website titles follow the same rules as journal articles and parts of books.