ASA style is a widely accepted format for writing university research papers that specifies such the arrangement and punctuation of footnotes and bibliographies. Standards for ASA style are specified in the ASA style guide, which is published by the American Sociological Association, the main scholarly organization for academic sociologists in the United States.

General Features

ASA is a flexible, easily-learned system for accurately and completely attributing influence and source material to sources. It is generally regarded as having fewer formal requirements than competing systems for attribution, such as the MLA style. The popularity of the ASA style and the nearly identical APA style for citing references is evidenced by the observation that many of the Wikipedia references sections for other styles, including the MLA style and Chicago Style use an ASA/APA format.

The ASA style is closely related in appearance and function to the more popular APA style. As with APA style, the general format for citing references is parenthetical referencing. All references are to be included at the end of the paper in a section titled "References," rather than "Works Cited" as in the MLA style. Also, unlike the MLA style, parenthetical references are to include the year of publication. This "author-date" system is a readily recognizable feature of the ASA style. This emphasis on dates is carried over in the references section, where the date is the first piece of information to follow the author's or authors' name(s).

A second distinguishing feature of ASA style is the limited use of footnotes and endnotes. As noted in the ASA Style Guide, footnotes are to be used sparingly in order to "cite material of limited availability or to add information presented in a table" (Salinas 2008). The full citation for the preceding parenthetical reference would appear in the "References" section as follows:

Salinas, Romelia. 2008. ASA Style Guide. Los Angeles, CA: California State University, Retrieved September 18, 2008 (http://www.calstatela.edu/library/bi/rsalina/asa.styleguide.html).

For Sociologists

"The ASA Style Guide (second edition) is designed to aid authors in preparing manuscripts for ASA journals and publications. The 48-page Style Guide is the authoritative statement on style, format, and other specifications for manuscript submissions. Chapters are included on Matters and Mechanics of Style, Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission, Copyeditor's Notations, Reference Sources, and Reference Formats. In straightforward, concise, and readable language, the Style Guide provides guidance and information to researchers, scholars, students, teachers, editors, and others seeking to improve the presentation of writing. Authors will find that the Guide format is familiar and appealing to a wide audience in the social and behavioral sciences, and is an indispensable reference for all those needing to know the ASA style." (ASA 2008).

Software Support

ASA style is supported by most major reference management software programs, including Endnote, Procite, Zotero, RefWorks, and so forth, making the formatting of references a fairly straightforward task.