AMA referencing, 11th edition

AMA style comes from the AMA Manual of Style, the guide from the American Medical Association, which publishes JAMA and the JAMA Network journals. It’s used in medicine and health, especially in US journals. This guide follows the 11th edition (2020). The reference examples are Peel’s own output, so you can check yours against them.

AMA is a numbered style, like Vancouver. In your writing, a small raised number stands for each source. At the end, a list gives the full details for each number. If your course handbook says something different from this guide, follow your handbook.

Numbers in the text

Number your sources in the order you first cite them. The first source you cite is 1, the next new source is 2, and so on. When you cite a source again, use the number it already has. The numbers are superscript: smaller, and raised above the line.

The numbers match the full reference list further down: Kahneman’s book is 1, Braun and Clarke 2, McLeod 3, Miller 4 and NICE 5. Source 6 would be the next new one, such as the 2004 article by Kahneman and four others.

Where the number goes

Put the number straight after the fact, idea or name it supports, with no space before it. It goes after a full stop or a comma, but before a colon or a semicolon. So at the end of a sentence, the full stop comes first: “…widely used in psychology.²” In the middle of a sentence, it sits after the comma: “Braun and Clarke,² for example, …”.

Naming authors in your sentence

You can name the authors as well, and the number still goes in. For one or two authors, give their surnames: Braun and Clarke². For three or more, name the first author and add “and colleagues”: Kahneman and colleagues⁶. An organisation’s name works the same way.

Page numbers

To point to a page, for a quote or one part of a long source, put the page in brackets straight after the number, all raised: ^1(p81). Use “p” for one page and “pp” for more than one, as in ^1(pp81-83). There’s no space and no full stop after the p.

Two or more sources at once

Put the numbers together, raised, with commas and no spaces: ^2,4. For three or more numbers in a row, join the first and last with a hyphen: ^1-3 means sources 1, 2 and 3. You can mix the two, as in ^1,3-5.

A source you read about in another one

Cite only the source you actually read, and say in your sentence where the idea came from: “Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory, as described by McLeod,³ …”. Only McLeod goes in your reference list, because that’s the one you read. If you can, find and read the original. Some universities want this set out in a particular way, so check your course handbook.

The reference list

The list at the end of your work is headed References. It gives the full details of every source you cited, and only those.

• Order: number order. Reference 1 is the first source you cited, 2 is the second, and so on. Don’t sort it A to Z.
• Layout: each reference starts with its number and a full stop. Peel pastes each one with a hanging indent, so the numbers stand out down the left.
• Authors: surname, then initials, with no full stops and no spaces: Turing AM. Put a comma between authors and a full stop after the last one. There’s no “and”.
• How many authors: list them all if there are six or fewer. With more than six, list the first three, then “et al.”. Peel does this for you.
• Article and chapter titles: no italics and no quotation marks. Give a capital letter only to the first word, names, and abbreviations like DNA. The first word after a colon takes a small letter too.
• Book and report titles: in italics, with a capital for each main word: Thinking, Fast and Slow. Peel adds these capitals for you.
• Journal names: the short form from the NLM Catalog, in italics, with no full stops: Psychol Rev for Psychological Review. A one-word name, like Mind, stays as it is.
• Journal details: year;volume(issue):pages, with no spaces, and the page range in full: 1950;59(236):433-460.
• Books: the edition, then the publisher and the year: 5th ed. Oxford University Press; 2016. The 11th edition leaves out the place of publication.
• DOIs and links: a journal article ends with its DOI, as in doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433. Online sources without a DOI end with “Accessed”, the date you looked at them, and the link. There’s no full stop after a DOI or a link.
• Dates: written out in full, month first: October 20, 2026.

Journal names: type the abbreviation

In Peel, type the journal’s full name as usual, and its abbreviation from the NLM Catalog in the Journal abbreviation box in the source’s details. Type it with its full stops, like Psychol. Rev.: AMA takes them out and adds the italics. To find it, search for the journal’s full name in the NLM Catalog.

Examples for each kind of source

Each card has a pattern to follow, a real example where there’s one, and the citation in the text. Every example is numbered 1 because it’s shown on its own. In your list, each source takes the number of its first citation.

A full reference list

Say you cite Kahneman’s book first, then Braun and Clarke, McLeod, Miller and NICE. This is what Peel copies for those five sources: numbered in the order you cited them, with italics and hanging indents that survive pasting into Word or Google Docs.

1. 1. Kahneman D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Allen Lane; 2011.
2. 2. Braun V, Clarke V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol. 2006;3(2):77-101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
3. 3. McLeod S. Working memory model. Simply Psychology. Accessed October 20, 2026. https://www.simplypsychology.org/working-memory.html
4. 4. Miller GA. The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol Rev. 1956;63(2):81-97. doi:10.1037/h0043158
5. 5. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Hypertension in Adults: Diagnosis and Management. 2019. Accessed October 20, 2026. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136

Miller’s title was typed with a capital after the colon; in AMA, that word starts with a small letter.

To build your list while you read, not the night before the deadline, see how to reference as you go. In a numbered style the order matters, so it helps to know which sources each part of your work uses: see how to track sources in each chapter.

Common mistakes

• Numbers in brackets. AMA uses raised numbers, not (1) or [1].
• The number before the full stop. In AMA it goes after full stops and commas: …in psychology.²
• A space before the number. It sits right against the word or punctuation mark.
• A new number each time. A source keeps the number it got the first time you cited it.
• Sorting the list A to Z. AMA lists sources in number order.
• Full stops after initials. It’s Turing AM, not Turing, A.M.
• “et al.” too soon, or too late. List every author up to six. With seven or more, list three, then “et al.”.
• Full journal names. Use the NLM abbreviation, in italics: Psychol Rev.
• Adding the place of publication. That was the 10th edition. The 11th gives the publisher only.
• Shortened page ranges. Write both page numbers in full, like 433-460. Vancouver shortens them, but AMA doesn’t.