Citation Styles: APA

APA Style Manual

The current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was published in 2019 and included some noteworthy changes:

• The publisher location is no longer included.
• DOI’s (Digital Object Identifiers) or URLs will be inserted at the end of a citation when appropriate and available. 
• Add only one space after a period.
• They (the plural pronoun) is now considered acceptable single pronoun usage. 

This page provides a short video introducing researchers to APA style, examples of reference citations, an overview of digital object identifiers, and links to more resources on in-text citations and reference pages. Please use our Ask A Librarian services if you need assistance citing in APA style. 

General Format for APA Citations

As with all citation styles, your References list should include the full resource details for any in-text citation you inserted and, conversely, should not include any resource that does not have an in-text citation. The list should be in alpha-numeric order by the first character of the first element included for each entry and should be created using a hanging indent. 

For in-text parenthetical citations, include the author’s last name, the publication date, and the page number or timestamp (for audio-visual material) if known. If you include the author(s) name in your cited sentence, you do not repeat their name within the parentheses, but the date and the page number or timestamp remain. 

Note that APA uses sentence casing for article and book titles in the References list (like this: Title of work: Capital letter also for the first word of the subtitle). Accidental title instead of sentence casing is a common error for auto-generated APA reference citations and must be corrected.

Please see the examples below and refer to the APA Formatting and Style Guidelines from the Purdue OWL linked on this page for further information and sample papers.

Examples for Specific Sources

Book, one author
In-Text: (Bennett, 2020, p. 275)
References: Physical Book: Bennett, B. (2020). The vanishing half. Riverhead Books.
References: Ebook: Bennett, B. (2020). The vanishing half [eBook edition]. Riverhead Books.

Book, two authors
In-Text, when authors' names are mentioned in the preceding sentence: (2000, p. 27)
In-Text, when authors' names aren't mentioned (Gillespie and Lerner, 2000, p. 27)
In-Text, when page number is unknown (Gillespie and Lerner, 2000)
References: Gillespie, P., & Lerner, N. (2000). The Allyn and Bacon guide to peer tutoring. Allyn and Bacon.

Book, three or more authors
In-Text: (Robbins et al.,1983)
References: Robbins, C. S., Bruun, B., & Zim, H. S. (1983). Birds of North America : A guide to field identification (Expanded, rev. ed.). Golden Press.

Book, with translator or other contributors
In-Text: (Vargas Llosa, 2001)
References: Vargas Llosa, M. (2001). The feast of the goat (E. Grossman, Trans.). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 

A work (e.g., essay, short story) in an anthology or compilation
In-Text: (Seale, 2010)
References: Seale, M. (2010). Information literacy standards and the politics of knowledge production. In E. Drabinski, A. Kumbier, and M. Accardi (Eds.), Critical library instruction: Theories and methods (pp.221-235), Library Juice Press.

Article in an online journal that also appears in print (i.e., has a page range)
In-Text: (Miller et al., 2009, p. 501)
References: Miller, M. J., Sendrowitz, K., Connacher, C., Blanco, S., de la Peña, C. M., Bernardi, S., & Morere, L. (2009). College students’ social justice interest and commitment: A social-cognitive perspective. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56(4), 495–507. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017220

Article in a print journal
In-Text: (Hannah, 2007)
References: Hannah, D. K. (2007). The private life, the public stage: Henry James in recent fiction. Journal of Modern Literature, 30(3), 70–94.

Article (webpage) on a website
In-Text: (Farkas, 2011)
References: Farkas, M. (2011, July 19). Tips for being a great blogger (and a good person). Information Wants to Be Free, meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2011/07/19/tips-for-being-a-great-blogger-and-good-person/

Webpage (no author)
In-Text: (“Tuscan White Bean Pasta,” 2018)
References: Tuscan white bean pasta. (2018, February 25). Budgetbytes. Retrieved March 18, 2020, from https://www.budgetbytes.com/tuscan-white-bean-pasta/

YouTube video
In-Text: (Smart Student, 2022, 0:35–1:23)
References: Smart Student. (2022, February 28). How to choose a good research topic: Research papers for beginners [Video]. Youtube. youtu.be/zxMsZsNw47U?si=545xUJ68fAkgQO0u

AI
In-Text: (OpenAI, 2023)
References: OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat