biblatex-asa

ASA (American Sociological Association) style for biblatex. Version 1.0.0 (2026-08-06).

This package formats in-text citations and the reference list in the style used by ASA journals (and widely taught in sociology). It follows the ASA Style Guide, 7th edition (2022), including how DOIs and URLs are written.

Author: Yuqi Liang <yuqi.liang.1900@gmail.com> License: LPPL 1.3c or later http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt Home: https://github.com/yuqi-liang-qiqi/biblatex-asa Bugs: https://github.com/yuqi-liang-qiqi/biblatex-asa/issues

What you need

• A recent LaTeX distribution (TeX Live / MiKTeX)
• biblatex (3.14 or newer)
• biber (2.14 or newer; recommended)

What is in this archive

README.md This file.

biblatex-asa.dtx The documented source of the package. Almost all of the style code lives here. You usually do not edit this by hand unless you are developing the package.

biblatex-asa.ins A short installer script. Running it against the .dtx produces the three files LaTeX actually loads (see below).

docs/ User manual and ready-to-compile examples.

• biblatex-asa-manual.pdf / .tex Short manual: install, cite, and print the bibliography.
  • biblatex-asa-example.bib Shared bibliography database used by both examples below.
    • biblatex-asa-with-package. Example that loads the package with usepackage{biblatex-asa}.
    • biblatex-asa-without-package. Same idea, but loads the style directly with usepackagestyle=biblatex-asa{biblatex}. Useful if you already manage biblatex options yourself.

Install (from this archive)

1. In the folder that contains biblatex-asa.ins, run:

   latex biblatex-asa.ins

This creates:

   biblatex-asa.sty   -- the LaTeX package you \usepackage
   biblatex-asa.bbx   -- bibliography formatting (reference list)
   biblatex-asa.cbx   -- citation formatting (in-text cites)

1. Copy those three files next to your .tex file, or install them into your local texmf tree so every project can find them.

1. Compile with pdflatex (or lualatex/xelatex) and biber, for example:

   pdflatex yourpaper
   biber yourpaper
   pdflatex yourpaper
   pdflatex yourpaper

Minimal usage

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex-asa}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

\begin{document}
Text citation \parencite{smith2020}.
\textcite{smith2020} argues that...
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Or without the wrapper package:

\usepackage[style=biblatex-asa,backend=biber]{biblatex}

Supported source types (BibTeX entry types)

Common scholarly: book, collection/proceedings, article (journals; also entrysubtype=newspaper or magazine), incollection/inbook/ inproceedings, phdthesis/mathesis/thesis

Web and reports: online/www, report/techreport, misc

Data, software, media: data/dataset, software, video/movie, audio/music/podcast

Other: legislation/legal (grey / legal-ish documents), unpublished

Put the DOI in the doi= field when you have one; the style prints it as https://doi.org/... . Otherwise it falls back to url=.

For web pages without a publication date, use year={n.d.} and (if you want) urldate= so an access date can be shown.

Notes on ASA 7th conventions this style aims for

• Author-year cites; page pins like (Kuhn 1970:71)
• Up to three authors in text; four or more use et al.
• Reference list headed REFERENCES, all authors listed
• Reprints as original year current year when origyear= is set
• Chapters as: Pp. x-y in Book Title, edited by ...

Personal communications (and most AI-generated text, if your instructor allows it) are often cited only in the text, not in the reference list. Check your course or journal rules.