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AMA Format: Citing Sources

An introduction to AMA style for academic papers based on the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition

AMA Style

AMA style is the format used by the American Medical Association. It is used for scholarly papers in health sciences.

In-Text Citations

All information taken from sources needs to be cited. For in-text citations:

  • Number citations consecutively throughout the paper.
    • If the same source is cited repeatedly, use the same number for subsequent citations
  • Use Arabic numeral superscripts outside periods and commas but inside colons and semicolons.
  • When more than two references are cited at a given place in the text, use hyphens to join the first and last numbers of a closed series; use commas (no space) to separate other parts of multiple citations.

                        As reported previously,1,3-8,19

  • Do not use a superscript immediately after a numeral or unit of measurement.
  • To cite a different page number in a single source, include the page number in the superscript; include the source only once on the References list.

Westman5(pp3,5) reported 8 cases

  • When using signal phrases/author tags containing authors’ names:
    • For sources with two authors use both authors’ names
    • For sources with three or more authors, use the first author’s name followed by et al:

Chasson and Revere4 report no increase in morbidity, but Stefanik et al5 suggest that more research is needed.

References List

References List

Sources cited in the paper must appear on the list of references, and every source on the list of references must be cited in the paper.

  • References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are cited in the paper.
  • Two references should not be combined under a single number.
  • Use italics and headline-style capitalization for book and journal titles; use Roman type and sentence-style capitalization for article titles.
  • Names of journals are abbreviated; see the NLM Catalog at for standard abbreviations
  • Personal communications (such as emails and conversations) should be cited parenthetically in the text of the paper but should not be included on the references list.

Authors’ Names on References List:

Authors' names should be written with the last name first, followed by a comma and the first initial (and second initial, if available), without spaces or periods between initials:

  • One Author:                          Jones CJ.
  • Two authors:                         Jones CJ, Garcia L.
  • Three to six Authors:           Jones CJ, Garcia L, Sand TA, Kim N, Loess L, Pratt ET.
  • More than six authors:        Jones CJ, Garcia L, Sand TA, et al.

Editor's Names on References List:

Editors' names are written in the same style as authors' names but are followed by the abbreviation "ed" or "eds."

Source Titles on References List:

  • Write titles of articles and book chapters in Roman type without quotation marks, using sentence-style capitalization; do not capitalize the first word of a subtitle.
  • Write titles of books, government documents, and pamphlets in italics, using headline-style capitalization (capitalize the first letter of the first word and all important words thereafter, including prepositions of four or more letters).
  • Write abbreviated names of journals in italics, using headline style capitalization.