ASA citation generator
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How to cite in ASA
ASA style comes from the American Sociological Association Style Guide. It is used in sociology and related social sciences. Citations use the author and year in the text, and sources go in an alphabetical list called References.
Journal article
LeCun, Yann, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton. 2015. “Deep Learning.” Nature 521(7553):436–44. doi:10.1038/nature14539.
Book
Cormen, Thomas H., Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. 2009. Introduction to Algorithms. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Website
Coltrera, Francesca. 2025. “5 Timeless Habits for Better Health.” https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/5-timeless-habits-for-better-health-202509243106.
In-text citations
ASA puts the author’s last name and the year in brackets. When you add a page number, follow the year with a colon and no space, for example (LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton 2015:437).
Parenthetical: (LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton 2015)
Narrative: LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton (2015)
With a page number: (LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton 2015:437)
Frequently asked questions
How is ASA different from APA?
Both are author-date styles. ASA writes out authors’ first names in the reference list, has no comma between author and year in the text, and uses a colon before page numbers.
How do I cite a source with three or more authors in ASA?
For three authors, name all three the first time and use et al. after that. For four or more, use the first author and et al. every time.
What goes in an ASA reference list?
Every source you cite, listed alphabetically by the first author’s last name, with a hanging indent.
Do I include DOIs in ASA?
Yes, when a source has one.