AMA Paper Format: Title Page, Citations and Example (11th Edition)

So, what is AMA format? AMA format is the style of the AMA Manual of Style, written by the editors of JAMA and the JAMA Network for medical and scientific publishing. The current edition is the 11th (2020). Nursing, medicine and public health instructors assign it because it's the style of many medical journals.

A journal style, not a class style

AMA covers how journals write and cite. It doesn't set a layout for a student paper. One Western Technical College guide states that the Manual doesn't specify title pages, headings or page numbers, so follow your instructor or use your best judgment. That is why AMA paper format varies by class, and why this page labels each layout rule as a recommendation.

Sources for AMA paper format

Citation rules come from the AMA Manual of Style site (11th edition), Purdue OWL and library guides at New York Medical College, Noorda College and UNF. The free AMA citation generator formats each source from a title, DOI or link.

Libraries suggest similar defaults for AMA paper format. When your instructor gives a number, use theirs.

TCU's guide also asks for a ragged right margin, so don't justify the text.

The AMA format title page is whatever your instructor wants; any AMA paper format guide can only suggest one. AMA is a journal style with no student title page, so a class may want a cover page, a few lines on page 1, or nothing but the title. If your syllabus is silent, ask before you format.

A common AMA format title page layout

The Noorda College guide suggests a separate page with centered text. The title starts about one-quarter of the way down, followed by the author names, course number and name, assignment and institution. TCU's guide notes that many students borrow APA's layout, with a centered title, author and affiliation on a separate page. The first illustration shows an AMA format title page for an invented paper.

No title page

Without one, the Noorda guide puts the author names, instructor name, course title and due date at the top of the first page. For a ready-made first page to adapt, the free APA title page generator builds a separate page you can change to match your class.

Add an abstract only if your professor requires one. TCU's guide places it after the title page. Ask whether to write one paragraph or a labeled summary.

AMA heading format

AMA doesn't prescribe class-paper headings, so these are library suggestions. Pick one scheme and use it consistently.

Which headings to use

The section names matter more than the type. Common choices are Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions for a research report, and Background, Search Strategy and Findings for a literature review. Your assignment sheet may name them.

AMA is a numbered system, so a citation in the text is a raised Arabic number rather than an author and year. For the exact forms, the AMA in-text citation generator shows the number for each source. The New York Medical College, Noorda, ASU and Purdue pages agree on nearly all of these rules.

Numbering and reuse

Number sources in the order they first appear, and give each source one number for the whole paper. When you cite it again, reuse that number. A source cited only in a table or figure takes its number from the first mention of that table or figure.

Punctuation and placement

Place the superscript right after the fact, idea or author it supports. Periods and commas go before it, and colons and semicolons go after it. Most guides put it after a closing quotation mark, though one section of an ASU guide places it inside the mark for short quotations, so check your instructor's preference.

Several sources

Use a hyphen for a closed series of three or more consecutive numbers, 4-7, and separate other numbers with commas and no spaces, 1,4-7,19.

Author names and pages

You can name authors in your sentence, with the number right after the surname: Aiken and colleagues.¹ For two authors name both; for three or more, give the first author followed by et al. To cite a page, put it in parentheses after the number, such as 3(p7), with p for one page and pp for a range. Page numbers are mainly for direct quotations, which AMA guides discourage.

Numbers and units

In AMA paper format, never put a superscript directly after a number or unit, because it looks like an exponent. Move it after the noun or rewrite: "5 patients" with the citation after the phrase.

The AMA format reference page, labeled References, goes at the end of the paper. It lists each source once, numbered to match the superscripts, in the order the sources were first cited. Don't alphabetize it. That also settles the AMA bibliography format question: AMA has a numbered reference list, not a bibliography or Works Cited page.

Setting up the AMA format reference page

Number the entries with Arabic numerals. Purdue OWL and Western Technical College say to single-space the entries, left-align them and skip a hanging indent; TCU's guide says to double-space them. Ask which your class wants.

Authors, titles and journals

Write authors as surname plus initials without periods: Smith RL. List all authors when there are six or fewer; for more than six, list the first three followed by et al. Capitalize only the first word of an article title and proper nouns. Abbreviate journal names the way the National Library of Medicine catalog does, in italics, without periods; a single-word title such as JAMA isn't abbreviated further.

Example entries

The engine made these; the abbreviation N Engl J Med was added by hand.

1. Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Sloane DM, Sochalski J, Silber JH. Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. JAMA. 2002;288(16):1987-1993. doi:10.1001/jama.288.16.1987
2. Pronovost P, Needham D, Berenholtz S, et al. An intervention to decrease catheter-related bloodstream infections in the ICU. N Engl J Med. 2006;355(26):2725-2732. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa061115
3. Gawande A. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Metropolitan Books; 2009.

DOIs and web sources

Give the DOI at the end when there is one, with no URL and no final period. Add an accessed date only when you cite a URL.

Let the tool number them

Paste a source into the citation tool above, or use the AMA citation maker. It numbers entries in citation order. For a similar numbered style, see Vancouver referencing examples.

AMA format tables follow the same pattern as journal tables. Number tables and figures separately in the order the text first mentions them (Table 1, Figure 1). UNF's guide sets the label in bold and the title in sentence case, not bold. New York Medical College's guide puts the label and title above the table, which should name the topic without summarizing the findings.

Rules and notes

Use horizontal rules rather than vertical lines. Mark descriptive footnotes with lowercase superscript letters in the order they appear, and list them below the table, one per line.

Sources under a table

If you reuse a published table, cite it with a superscript number in the table and the source in a lettered footnote. The New York Medical College guide prefers Adapted from for a modified table, Reproduced with permission from for an exact copy (which needs permission), and Derived from when you calculated from a small amount of source data. For the APA version, see APA table format.

Figures

Write the legend in a sentence below or beside the figure. A reproduced figure needs written permission and a source in the legend.

AMA uses numerals in general. UNF's guide lists the exceptions: spell out a number that begins a sentence, ordinals from first to ninth, and common fractions. Write dates with the month spelled out, as in April 2, 2010. Use SI units with a space between number and unit, and no comma in four-digit numbers (1600 km).

This AMA format example paper is an outline of an invented nursing literature review. The three cited works are real and match the AMA format reference page above; the paper and its sentences are made up. Treat the layout as a suggestion, and let your assignment override it.

Sample page of body text

The last illustration above shows a page of an AMA format example paper with a bold Introduction heading, a subsection in italics and three numbers. Each new number appears in order, which is why the first source is 1, the second 2, and so on.

If you add a source early in the draft, renumber everything after it.

AMA and Vancouver both use numbered references, so the entries look alike. AMA superscripts the numbers and uses surname-plus-initials authors, while APA uses author and year. If your instructor assigns APA, see the APA format guidelines. For another numbered style, there is the guide to IEEE reference format. Browse every topic on the student writing guides page.