AAA Citation Format in Google Docs: Complete 2026 Guide

AAA style — published in the AAA Style Guide by the American Anthropological Association — is the citation format anthropology departments expect for coursework, field reports, and ethnographic writing. It runs on author-date parenthetical citations, much like Chicago author-date, but with its own conventions for the source list, which AAA calls "References Cited" rather than "Works Cited" or "Bibliography."

Google Docs has no built-in AAA template, so the whole thing has to be built by hand. This guide walks through that setup from a blank page — fonts, spacing, in-text citations, and a properly formatted References Cited page — so you don't end up borrowing rules from APA or Chicago by accident.

1. The Foundation: Font, Margins, and Spacing

Start from a blank document rather than one carried over from another assignment. Pasted-in text drags along hidden formatting that tends to resurface later as mismatched fonts or inconsistent spacing.

Set the font

1. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac) to select the whole document.
2. Choose Times New Roman from the font dropdown.
3. Set the size to 12 pt.

The AAA Style Guide doesn't lock in one specific typeface, but Times New Roman at 12 pt is the standard anthropology departments expect for submitted papers. Check your syllabus first — some instructors ask for Calibri or a similar sans-serif instead.

Set the margins

1. Go to File > Page setup.
2. Set all four margins to 1 inch.
3. Click OK.

Set line spacing

1. Go to Format > Line & paragraph spacing > Double.
2. From the same menu, select Remove space after paragraph.

AAA papers are double-spaced throughout, including block quotes and the References Cited page. Removing the default paragraph spacing keeps the document looking consistent instead of showing gaps between some paragraphs and not others.

2. The Title Page

AAA papers typically open with a separate title page rather than a heading block at the top of page one. Build it like this:

1. Insert a page break (Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter) so the title page stays isolated from the body.
2. Leave several blank lines above the title so it sits roughly a third of the way down the page.
3. Center the paper's title in plain 12 pt Times New Roman — no bold, italics, or underlining.
4. A few lines below, add your name, the course number and name, the instructor's name, and the date — each centered on its own line.

Some field-methods courses also want a word count or a short abstract on the title page. Add those as centered lines below the heading block if the assignment calls for them.

Page numbers

1. Go to Insert > Headers & footers > Header.
2. Go to Insert > Page numbers and choose the top-right option.
3. If your instructor wants the title page unnumbered, use Insert > Page numbers > More options, select Different first page, and start numbering from page 2.

AAA doesn't require a running header with your last name the way MLA does — a plain page number in the top-right corner is enough.

3. In-Text Citations: Author-Date

AAA uses parenthetical author-date citations. The shape looks familiar if you've used Chicago author-date or APA, but the punctuation has its own rules:

• Basic citation: Kinship structures are rarely as fixed as early ethnographies suggested (Geertz 1973:45).
• Author named in the sentence: Geertz (1973:45) argues that kinship structures are rarely as fixed as early ethnographies suggested.
• Two authors: (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991:12).
• Three or more authors: (Marcus et al. 1986:88).
• Multiple works, same citation: (Malinowski 1922; Evans-Pritchard 1940).
• No page reference available: Omit it — (Appadurai 1996) stands as a complete citation on its own.

The detail that trips up the most students: AAA separates the year and page number with a colon and no space after it — (Geertz 1973:45), not (Geertz, 1973, p. 45). That comma-heavy version is APA punctuation, and it's easy to import out of habit.

4. Block Quotes and Field Notes

Quotes of roughly 50 words or more — including long excerpts from interview transcripts or field notes — should be set off as a block quote rather than run into the paragraph:

1. Start the quote on a new line.
2. Highlight it and indent 0.5" from the left margin using the ruler or Format > Align & indent > Indentation options.
3. Keep it double-spaced, matching the rest of the paper.
4. Drop the quotation marks — the indent already signals a direct quote.
5. Place the citation after the final punctuation: . . . end of quote. (Malinowski 1922:112)

If you're quoting an interview participant rather than a published source, note the interview in the References Cited list as a personal communication and cite it in text the same way — (Participant name, pers. comm., 2026) — unless your IRB protocol requires anonymizing the name.

5. The References Cited Page

AAA labels its source list "References Cited," not "Works Cited," "Bibliography," or plain "References." Build it the same way you would for Chicago author-date, with a few AAA-specific habits layered in.

Start a new page

Insert a page break (Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter) after the last line of your conclusion. Center and type References Cited in plain 12 pt Times New Roman, then return to left alignment before typing entries.

Apply hanging indents

1. Type each entry as its own paragraph, double-spaced, in author-date order.
2. Select all entries.
3. Go to Format > Align & indent > Indentation options.
4. Under Special indent, choose Hanging and set it to 0.5".
5. Click Apply.

Format entries correctly

Note that AAA-style journal article entries generally don't italicize the article title — only the journal name is italicized. This is one of the easiest details to get backwards if you're used to APA or MLA conventions.

Alphabetize correctly

• Sort by the author's last name, or the organization name for institutional sources.
• For multiple works by the same author, order them by publication year, oldest first.
• If an author has two works published the same year, add "a" and "b" after the year — in both the entry and the in-text citation — e.g., (Geertz 1973a:45).

6. Ethnographic Conventions Google Docs Won't Handle for You

Anthropology writing carries a few style habits beyond citation format that Google Docs has no setting for, so they have to be applied by hand:

• Italicize foreign-language and emic terms on first use — habitus, liminality — and define them in plain text immediately after.
• Use pseudonyms consistently for interview participants and note the substitution in a methods section or footnote, per your IRB protocol.
• Number and title any maps, kinship diagrams, or photographs consecutively, and reference each one by number in the body text.
• Spell out ethnic and cultural group names as the group itself prefers, rather than defaulting to an older or more general term used in older ethnographies you're citing.

7. Final Submission Checklist

• 1-inch margins on all sides
• Times New Roman, 12 pt, double-spaced throughout
• Title page with paper title, name, course, instructor, and date
• Page numbers in the top-right corner
• Author-date in-text citations using a colon between year and page — (Author Year:Page)
• Block quotes and long field-note excerpts indented 0.5" with no quotation marks
• Foreign-language and emic terms italicized on first use and defined
• References Cited page with 0.5" hanging indents, alphabetized by author, then by year
• Every in-text citation matches a References Cited entry, and vice versa

Export the right way

Go to File > Download > PDF Document (.pdf) unless your instructor asks for a .docx. Skim the exported PDF before submitting — confirm the title page, page numbers, and hanging indents on the References Cited page all carried over the way they appeared in the editor.

One More Thing: Make the Writing Sound Like You

Getting the citation format right doesn't change how a paper reads. If AI helped draft any section — a literature review, a methods summary, a rough first pass at your analysis — that writing style often stands apart from the rest of the paper, and instructors increasingly run submissions through AI detectors before grading.

AuraWrite AI rewrites AI-drafted text so it reads like your own voice — keeping your argument, field observations, and citations intact — while bringing AI detection scores back down to human range. Run your draft through the humanizer first, then apply the AAA formatting above to the cleaned-up text.

Conclusion

AAA format comes down to a handful of details that separate it from Chicago and APA — the colon between year and page, the References Cited label, and the italics reserved for journal titles rather than article titles. Set the foundation once, build the title page and References Cited list carefully, and the rest of the paper follows the same double-spaced, hanging-indent structure you'd use for any other author-date style.

Once the formatting is locked in, the only thing left between your draft and the grade is the writing itself.

Last updated: July 20, 2026