ASA vs APA: Which Citation Style for Sociology Papers?

Quick Answer: ASA vs APA

Use ASA when you are writing for a sociology journal, an ASA conference, or a sociology course that names ASA. Use APA 7 when the course or journal is in psychology, education, nursing, social work, or another behavioral field that names APA. Do not treat sociology as automatically APA: flagship sociology journals such as American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces expect ASA punctuation, full first names, and title-case article titles. Do not mix (Author Year:Page) with an APA reference list. This page is the sociology venue decision. For the broader field map, use citation styles by discipline. For APA-only coursework, use when to use APA.

Current Manuals: ASA 7 vs APA 7

The comparison only holds if you are using the editions instructors and journals now expect. The ASA Style Guide, 7th edition, was published by the American Sociological Association in June 2022 (163 pages; ISBN 9780912764580). It replaced the 6th edition and is still the current ASA manual in 2026. American Sociological Review still points authors to that 7th edition for manuscript details. APA 7th edition, published by the American Psychological Association in 2020, is still the current Publication Manual in 2026; in-text rules sit in §§8.10–8.36 and reference examples in Chapter 10.

Older ASA vs APA charts often date ASA 7 as 2023. The ASA store record and library catalog entries (call number HM569 .A54 2022) date the seventh edition to June 2022. If a handout still cites the 5th edition, treat it as a teaching remnant: Purdue OWL’s public ASA pages still note that their bibliographical examples were taken from the 5th edition.

The first sentence is from the ASA Style Guide page (updated 29 October 2024). The colon rule is the wording of the ASA Style Guide, 7th edition, p. 55, as quoted by Douglas College Library. The REFERENCES sentences are from the live ASR submission guidelines, which also name the ASA Style Guide (7th ed., 2022). The APA sentence is from the APA Style author–date page (§§8.10–8.36). Together they define the choice: two author–date systems that are not interchangeable punctuation.

What Is the Difference Between ASA and APA?

Both styles put a name and a year in the sentence so a social-science reader can judge recency. The deepest difference is how much of the author and title they want visible in the list. ASA prints full first names, puts article titles in quotation marks and title case, and still asks for the city of publication. APA shortens names to initials, lowercases article and book titles, and dropped publisher location in the 7th edition. That is why an ASR reference list never looks like a Psychological Science list even when both cite the same book.

ASA is also not “Chicago with sociology branding,” even though UCSB Library correctly notes that ASA in-text citations generally follow Chicago’s author–date pattern. Chicago 18 now omits place of publication for books published in or after 1900; ASA 7 still wants City, State: Publisher. If your history seminar named Chicago, use APA vs Chicago or Turabian vs Chicago, not this page. If your course named Harvard referencing, use Harvard vs APA.

In-Text Citations

The punctuation students notice first is the comma. ASA writes (Author Year). APA writes (Author, Year). Add a specific location and the gap widens: ASA uses a colon and no p.; APA uses a comma plus p. or pp. ASR’s author instructions restate the colon rule with a journal example:

The n.d. row is the ASA exception. Ordinary ASA citations have no comma: (Granovetter 1973). When the year is missing, the UTM / UHCL 7th-edition tip sheet (prepared by Jayne Baker from the 2022 manual) writes (Lastname, n.d.) — the comma appears only in that rare case. APA uses a comma in every parenthetical citation, including n.d.

How many names before et al.

This is the failure mode that survives a “they look the same” first glance. Framingham State’s ASA 7 guide, the UTM tip sheet, and ASR’s author instructions agree on the ASA count:

• ASA, two authors: name both every time, joined by "and" — (Innocente and Baker 2018).
• ASA, three authors: name all three the first time; later citations become first-plus-et-al. The UTM example is (Dinovitzer, Garth, and Sterling 2013), then (Dinovitzer et al. 2013).
• ASA, four or more: first-plus-et-al. from the first citation — (Bianchi et al. 2012).
• APA 7, two authors: name both every time; use & in parentheses and "and" in a narrative citation.
• APA 7, three or more: first-plus-et-al. from the first citation (§8.17). A three-author sociology article that you cite in APA never lists the second and third surnames in the text.

The UTM three-author example is a real article: Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, and Joyce S. Sterling, "Buyers’ Remorse? An Empirical Assessment of the Desirability of a Lawyer Career," Journal of Legal Education 63(2), November 2013. Use it to learn the name count; do not copy a fabricated page number.

Several sources in one parenthesis

Both styles can put more than one work in a single parenthetical citation. ASA lists them alphabetically and separates them with semicolons, as Douglas College restates from the 7th edition (2022:55–58). APA 7 also uses semicolons, but each work still carries its comma after the name. ASR’s author instructions allow alphabetical or date order; follow the stricter of the manual and the journal.

Block Quotations: 50 Words vs 40

A 45-word quotation is a run-in quote in ASA and a block quote in APA. Douglas College, citing the ASA Style Guide, 7th edition, pp. 32–33 and 116, treats quotations of 50 words or more as blocks: new line, indent 0.5 inch, no quotation marks. The UTM tip sheet uses the same 50-word cut. APA 7 §8.27, as restated by university APA pages that quote the Publication Manual, starts the block at 40 words. Do not “fix” an ASA paper by blocking a 42-word sentence.

The Same Journal Article in Both Styles

Use one real article and look at the punctuation, not an invented "Social Mobility in Urban Contexts" placeholder. Mark Granovetter’s 1973 AJS paper is the classic weak-ties article (DOI 10.1086/225469; 78(6):1360–1380).

A current sociology-teaching article shows the same contrast with two authors and a newer DOI. Nathan Innocente and Jayne Baker, "The Sociology Teaching Fellowship: A Mentorship Model for Graduate Student Teacher Training," Teaching Sociology 46(4):335–345, DOI 10.1177/0092055X18791686.

A 2024 ASR article shows the same mechanics on a current flagship paper. Mustafa Yavaş, "White-Collar Opt-Out: How “Good Jobs” Fail Elite Workers," American Sociological Review 89(4):761–788, DOI 10.1177/00031224241263497. Douglas College’s article examples use this paper to teach the doi: prefix.

Read the pairs for the mechanical differences: ASA keeps Mark, Nathan, and Mustafa in full, uses "and," title-cases the article and wraps it in quotes, leaves the volume in roman type, and writes volume(issue):pages with a colon. APA initials the given names, uses &, sentence-cases the article with no quotes, italicizes the volume, and writes https://doi.org/… with no period after the URL.

Four authors: Bianchi, Sayer, Milkie, and Robinson

Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie, and John P. Robinson, "Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?" Social Forces 91(1):55–63, DOI 10.1093/sf/sos120. Four authors trigger et al. in both in-text systems from the first citation; the reference list still prints every name. ASR’s author instructions are explicit: do not replace names with et al. in the list.

Book Citations Compared

Patricia Hill Collins’s revised tenth-anniversary edition of Black Feminist Thought (Routledge, 2000; New York) is a real book, not a stand-in. ASA still wants the city; APA 7 does not. Both styles put the edition after the title, but ASA writes 2nd ed. as its own sentence after the italic title, while APA puts (2nd ed.) in roman type before the publisher.

For New York City, the UTM 7th-edition tip sheet says to write only "New York," not "New York, NY." That is an ASA house detail APA never asks you to remember, because APA 7 dropped place of publication.

Chapter in an Edited Book

ASA chapter entries keep the city and write Pp. before the page range inside the container. ASR’s author instructions give this official collection example. APA 7 puts initials in the author and editor slots, sentence-cases the chapter title, and drops the city.

Author Names, Title Case, and the Volume Number

Framingham State states the ASA title rule in one line: use title case for books, articles, chapters, and webpages. APA 7 does the opposite in the reference list (sentence case for those works; title case only for the periodical name). Do not "fix" an ASA list by lowercasing article titles, and do not add quotation marks to an APA article title.

DOI presentation varies in ASA teaching materials. Framingham’s 7th-edition template and Douglas’s article examples write doi:DOI. The UTM tip sheet, also based on the 2022 manual, uses https://doi.org/… when the publisher supplies a DOI. Follow the journal: ASR asks for a persistent identifier on datasets and points you back to the 7th edition for examples. APA 7 is not flexible: if a DOI exists, write it as https://doi.org/ and do not add a retrieval date just because you downloaded the PDF.

Group Authors and Abbreviations

ASA lets you shorten a long organization in the text if the reference list spells the abbreviation out. Douglas College quotes the 7th edition (2022:68–69). APA 7 has a similar first-citation expansion rule (§8.21), but the parenthetical still uses a comma.

Manuscript Headings

If the syllabus asks for ASA headings as well as ASA citations, the levels are not APA’s five-level scheme. The UTM tip sheet, prepared from the 2022 manual, gives the student-visible hierarchy. Do not begin with a heading titled INTRODUCTION.

THIS IS A FIRST-LEVEL HEAD
This Is a Second-Level Head
This is a third-level head.

First-level heads are all caps and left-justified. Second-level heads are italic, left-justified, and title case except prepositions and conjunctions. Third-level heads are italic, indented, end with a period, and use sentence case. That is why an ASA manuscript list is headed REFERENCES: it is a first-level head. Some student tip sheets print an italic References instead; follow the instructor. APA 7 student papers use References, bold and centered, and a different heading ladder in Chapter 2.

Websites, Retrieval Dates, and Sources with No Date

ASA still has a retrieval-date habit that APA 7 mostly dropped. Framingham’s webpage template is Author. Year. "Title." Site. Retrieved Month Day, Year (URL). The UTM tip sheet, citing the 7th edition, says access dates are not required for ordinary webpages and are reserved for frequently updated items. Follow the stricter of your instructor’s handout and the journal’s author guide. APA 7 includes a retrieval date only when the page is designed to change and is not archived (§9.16).

Personal Communications

Interviews you conducted, emails, texts, and unrecorded conversations are treated as personal communications in both styles: they appear in the text and usually do not get a reference-list row. The ASA Style Guide, 7th edition, pp. 66 and 91, as quoted by Douglas College, is explicit:

The initials and date above are a labeled classroom template, not a real email. If you are citing a published interview (a podcast, a newspaper Q&A, an archived oral history), that is a recoverable source and belongs in the list. See how to cite interviews in APA and personal communications.

When to Use ASA vs APA

Use ASA when

• The course is in a sociology department and the syllabus names ASA or the ASA Style Guide.
• You are submitting to an ASA journal or a sociology journal that follows ASA house style (American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Teaching Sociology).
• The paper is for an ASA annual-meeting submission or a sociology working-paper series that specifies ASA.
• A sociology dissertation handbook names ASA for the notes and reference list.

Use APA 7 when

• The course is psychology, education, nursing, or social work and the syllabus names APA. See when to use APA and the psychology citation guide.
• The journal is a psychology, education, or interdisciplinary behavioral-science title that requires the Publication Manual.
• A methods, statistics, or research-design course across the social sciences names APA even if your major is sociology.
• You are writing for a mixed audience (public health, organizational behavior, human development) whose shared default is APA.

Interdisciplinary work is where students guess wrong. A sociology-of-education paper aimed at an AERA journal is usually APA. The same paper aimed at Sociology of Education may be ASA. A medical-sociology manuscript can land in an ASA journal or in a Vancouver/AMA health journal. Read the author guide. For the broader map, use citation styles by discipline.

Failure Modes Students Actually Hit

• Putting a comma in an ordinary ASA citation. (Granovetter, 1973) is APA. ASA is (Granovetter 1973). The only common ASA comma inside the parentheses is the n.d. exception.
• Using `&` in ASA. ASA spells "and" in the text and in the list. & belongs in APA parenthetical citations and APA references.
• Initials in an ASA reference list. ASA wants Patricia Hill Collins, not P. H. Collins, unless the source itself publishes initials only.
• Sentence-case article titles in ASA, or quoted titles in APA.
• Writing `p. 1361` in an ASA citation. ASA’s official rule is a colon and no space: (Granovetter 1973:1361).
• Dropping the city from an ASA book. Collins 2000 still needs New York: Routledge in ASA. APA 7 must not add the city.
• *Applying APA’s 3+ et al. rule to a three-author ASA paper on the first citation.*
• Italicizing the volume in ASA, or leaving it roman in APA.
• Blocking a 42-word quotation in ASA. The ASA cut is 50 words; APA’s is 40.
• *Writing et al. in an ASA reference list.* ASR forbids it for ordinary author counts.
• Inventing a sociology handbook that "uses APA because social science uses APA." Sociology’s own association publishes ASA.

Same Author, Same Year

Both styles add a, b, c after the year when one author (or the same author group) has more than one work in that year. Letters are assigned by title order in the reference list, then reused in the text. Framingham’s ASA 7 example is 2022a and 2022b. The UTM tip sheet’s real pair is Maroto and Pettinicchio (2014a, 2014b). The in-text forms still differ by comma:

Related Guides

• When to Use APA Style
• APA Citation Guide for Psychology Students
• Harvard vs APA: Key Differences
• APA vs Chicago: Key Differences and When to Use Each
• Citation Styles by Discipline
• How to Cite Multiple Authors