ASA Style Paper: Format, Title Page and Example (7th Edition)

The American Sociological Association publishes the ASA Style Guide, now in its seventh edition (2022). Sociology and criminology instructors assign it, and ASA's own journals use it. The ASA style guidelines cover three things: how a manuscript is laid out, how you cite sources in the text, and how you list them at the end.

Why guides disagree

ASA's guide is written for journal authors, and classroom handouts adapt it. One handout says ASA doesn't separate student and professional requirements, so follow your instructor. Where guides differ, this page says so.

Sources for this guide

It draws on the seventh-edition handouts from Douglas College, CSU Channel Islands, Sierra College and several other libraries, plus the manuscript checklist on asanet.org. Entries on this page were formatted with our engine; the free ASA citation generator does the same for your sources.

Page setup is where an ASA style paper is least consistent from guide to guide. Use this table, and when your instructor gives a number, use theirs.

Running head

The running head is a shortened version of the title in capital letters at the top left of each page. The guides above cap it at 60 characters.

The ASA style title page is a separate first page that holds everything a reader needs to identify the paper. For an ASA style title page, the seventh-edition guides list the same pieces: the full title, the name and institution of each author, the word count and a title footnote. There's no course or instructor line in the guides' lists, unlike APA, so add one only if your instructor asks.

What goes on it

• Running head: a shortened title in capitals, top left, with page number 1 at the top right.
• Title: the full title, centered, with a capital after any colon. A Sierra College guide suggests 10 to 12 words with no abbreviations and no italics, underlining or bold; a handout from Austin Peay State University shows the title in bold.
• Author and institution: your name and school on separate lines. Co-authors are stacked vertically.
• Word count: the total for text, notes and references.
• Title footnote: an asterisk after the title, with a footnote giving the corresponding author's address and e-mail plus any acknowledgments. Ask whether your class wants it.

ASA citation title page for a class

Students searching for an ASA citation title page sometimes expect an APA-style cover page. The free title page generator can produce a separate first page that you adapt to the ASA items above. It follows APA, so change the lines yourself.

ASA style title page sample

The first illustration above is an ASA style title page sample for an invented paper. Copy its order, then replace the details.

Include an abstract in your ASA style paper only when the assignment requires one. The university guides agree on the details. It starts on a new page after the title page, repeats the title as its heading, and runs as a single paragraph of no more than 200 words in your own words. ASA's journal checklist asks for 150 to 200 words and a descriptive summary without jargon.

Keywords

If you need keywords, list three to five after the abstract on the same page, in italics.

ASA style guidelines for headings are simpler than APA's. There are three levels, all in the same type size as the text, and most class papers use only the first two.

Level 2 capitalization

The Jefferson Community and Technical College guide describes level 2 as italic title case: capitalize the major words and leave prepositions, articles and coordinating conjunctions lowercase. Don't bold the headings, and don't number them.

ASA style essay or short paper

A short ASA style essay may need no headings at all, though a long ASA style paper usually does. Add level 1 headings once the paper has distinct parts, such as Background, Data and Methods, Results and Discussion. The sample outline below shows a typical order.

ASA is an author-date system, so you cite the author's surname and the year in the sentence and give the full source in the references. This is the pattern most often missed: there is no comma between the name and the year, and the page follows a colon. For a full set of forms, the ASA in-text citation generator formats them from your source.

The basic forms

• Author in your sentence: Granovetter (1973) argued…, with the page after the year for a quotation: (1973:1362).
• Author in parentheses: (Granovetter 1973) or (Granovetter 1973:1362).
• Two authors: both surnames joined by "and" every time: (Walker and Allen 2004).
• Several sources: separate with semicolons: (Granovetter 1973; Merton 1938).
• Same author, several years: Wilson (1978, 1987).

Three or more authors

Guides differ here. The Texas A&M-San Antonio and CSU Channel Islands guides say to name all three authors the first time and use et al. afterward, and to use et al. from the start for four or more. Check which rule your instructor uses, and apply it consistently.

Page numbers and block quotes

Include a page only when you quote or point to a specific passage. Quotations of 50 or more words become an indented block with no quotation marks. Most guides single-space it, but Douglas College double-spaces block quotations, so ask your instructor.

In an ASA style paper, the ASA citation reference page lists every work you cited, and only those. It begins on a new page after the text and before any tables, figures or appendices, with References centered at the top. Guides differ on whether the label is bold, plain or all capitals, so match your instructor's example.

Setting up the ASA citation reference page

Double-space the whole list, including between entries. Alphabetize by the first author's surname, and put works with no author under the first significant word of the title. Give each entry a hanging indent of 0.5 inch (several guides give this number; Douglas College says to indent later lines five to seven spaces). Use "and" rather than an ampersand.

Example entries

These entries were rendered with the engine. Italicize the journal and book titles in your paper.

• Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78(6):1360–80. doi:10.1086/225469.
• Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review 3(5):672–82. doi:10.2307/2084686.

Seventh-edition details

Only the first author's name is inverted. Page ranges drop repeated digits: 1360–80, not 1360–1380. The DOI follows doi: with a final period in the CSU Channel Islands handout; other guides vary.

Format your entries

Paste a source into the citation tool above, or use the ASA citation generator, to get entries in this pattern. Review them against your source.

The ASA style guidelines ask you to use notes sparingly. The Douglas College guide gives three reasons: to explain or expand on the text, to cite material that readers can't easily find, and to add information to a table. Mark a note with a superscript number, and keep one type, footnotes or endnotes, for the whole paper. Footnotes on the title page and in tables are the exception.

Footnotes or endnotes

Footnotes sit at the bottom of the page where the number appears. Endnotes gather in a section titled Notes or Endnotes. Guides disagree on where it goes, and ASA's journal checklist puts Endnotes after the references, so ask your instructor. Double-space either type.

Tables and figures

Number tables and figures separately and in order (Table 1, Figure 1). Table titles sit left-aligned above the table and figure captions below the figure, per the Sierra College guide. That guide puts tables at the end, each on its own page, as ASA's journal checklist does; ask whether your class allows tables in the text. For comparison, APA table format shows the APA version.

Appendices

Label appendices with letters, Appendix A and Appendix B, each with a title. A single appendix is simply labeled Appendix.

Here's an ASA style paper example in outline form. The paper is invented, for a sociology course; the three cited works are real and match the reference page above. Your assignment may override parts of it.

ASA style paper example: sample first paragraph

The last illustration above shows body text with a level 1 heading, a level 2 heading and two citations. Its page number is illustrative.

Many sociology students also write in APA, and the pages look alike. The big differences are the citation form, (Author Year:Page) against (Author, Year, p. #), the title page, and the reference entries, which use full first names and a bare year in ASA. For APA setup, see the APA format guidelines. To compare two author-date systems, Harvard vs APA shows a similar contrast. Browse every topic on the student writing guides page.