The AMA (American Medical Association) style is most commonly used in the health sciences and medical fields. The following examples use the AMA Style 11th edition.

In-Text Citations

AMA Style uses superscript numbers for in-text citations.

• Depending on the punctuation, the superscript may appear in different places:
  • After a period, comma, or mid-sentence word.
  • Before a colon or semi-colon.
• For more than one reference, separate superscript numbers with a comma and no space. For example, use^1,2 to cite both references used.
• Do not put superscript after a number. For example, do not say “3² patients…” Instead, say “3 patients²…”
• The number used in the superscript is the order of references used. Your first reference will always be 1, the second one will always be 2, and so on.  If you refer to the same source later in your paper, use the number first used to cite that specific source.
• Unpublished materials, such as emails or phone conversations, are cited by parenthetical references instead of superscript since they cannot be retrieved by others. These citations should be placed before the punctuation and include information such as author, type of material, and date.

Example

According to the AMA Manual of Style, this is the accepted format for articles submitted to both JAMA and the Archives.¹ Similarly to the APA style, personal communications are put in parentheses as such²: “according to the library director (J. Kearns, oral communication, June 2018), AMA is used by several instructors at VTC…”

Reference List

References should be listed in the order they were used in the paper, NOT alphabetically. References in the reference list have to be retrievable information; this means anything that has not been accepted to be published and personal communications should not be included in this list. Instead, refer to the in-text citation guidelines for parenthetical citations.