AMA Citations: Home

Purdue Online Writing Lab: APA Style Guide

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides writing resources and instructional materials for writing projects.  The AMA Style Guide includes an introduction to the style, citation formatting for various sources, formatting for in-text citations and reference lists, and more.

AMA Manual of Style 

Find a Journal Abbreviation 

To search and find the abbreviated journal title, search the Journal Title's Name or the ISSN.

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The AMA citation style was developed by the American Medical Association for the purpose of writing medical research.  Physical Training and Athletic Training uses this citation style. 

Always check with your professor to determine which citation style you should use before beginning your paper or project. 

You will need to identify:

• Author(s)
• Title of the Work
• Publisher Information
• Date of Publication or Creation

• References are found at the end of a manuscript and are titled “Reference List". 
• Each item should be listed in numerical order (two references should not be combined under a single reference number) as opposed to alphabetically.
• Each item should be single-spaced.
•  Author Information:
  • List author's names as last name and the initials of their first and middle names.
  • Separate author names with commas.
  • Do not use periods between initials. 
  • If there are six authors or fewer, list all authors.
  • If there are seven or more authors, list the first three and then abbreviate with et al.
• Journal titles must be abbreviated using the National Library of Medicine abbreviations' catalog. 
• Each reference is divided with periods into bibliographic groups, and each bibliographic group contains bibliographic elements, which may be separated using the following punctuation marks:
  • Comma: if the items are sub-elements of a bibliographic element or a set of closely related elements (e.g., the authors’ names).
  • Semicolon: if the elements in the bibliographic group are different (e.g., between the publisher’s name and the copyright year) or if there are multiple occurrences of logically related elements within a group; also, before volume identification data.
  • Colon: before the publisher’s name, between the title and the subtitle, and after a connective phrase (e.g., “In,” “Presented at”).