LibGuides: APA Citations Study Guide: Basic Rules for Citations

APA FORMAT

APA is the American Psychological Association, which produces the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. This book is used as a reference for essays or research papers, especially in psychology and the sciences.

When you write a research paper for a class, at the end of the paper you will create a reference list of the sources used, such as magazine and journal articles, books, electronic databases, or websites. If your instructor asks you to use APA format for your paper, the reference list will be in a certain order: author, date, title, etc. This provides the information for someone reading your paper to locate the sources you have used. The reference list should be in alphabetical order, double spaced, and have hanging indentations.

Websites present a particular challenge for creating citations. Two general rules to follow for an APA citation of a website are to reference specific information, rather than just homepages or menu pages, and give web addresses that work. If you have a citation for a research paper that doesn’t fit the examples below, remember the library’s website has links to online sites that you can consult for additional help.

Reference Page Rules and Citation Elements

Your references will be the last section of your paper. Always start on a new page and center your title References, this will be the only header that is not in bold. There are four major elements that will go into your reference entry: author, date, title, and source.

So how do we define who the author is? The author can be an individual, multiple people, an organization, or a combination of people and organizations. To ensure that we have a proper citation we need to include all of the listed authors. The author element will always have a standard format. Follow these rules for the author element:

Author’s name should be inverted, the surname listed first, followed by a comma and the author’s first and middle initials
- Example: Author, A. A.
A comma will separate an author’s initials from additional author names, if there are two or more authors separate the last two with an ampersand (&)
- Example: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B.
- Example: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C.
Use a comma to separate initials and suffixes
- Example: Author, A. A., Jr., & Author, B. B.
Do not include titles, position, rank, or academic achievements with the name
For group authors spell out the full name of the organization with a period at the end
- Example: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If there is no author to be found (very rare) move the title into the author position

The date referrers to the date of publication and it can take several forms: year only; year, month, and day; year and month; or year and season. Use the format that best fits your source, for example a news sources would use the year, month, day as they are published daily. Follow these rules for the date:

Put the date of publication in parenthesis and end with a period, for example (2020).
For works that have the year, month, and day put them in that order in the parenthesis and end with a period, for example (2021, March 30).
Some periodicals will have a season in which they are released include this after the year in parenthesis and end with a period, for example (2020, Spring/Summer).
Online sources often have updates to the information posted, in this case use the most recent update as your date of publication.
Some websites change on a regular basis (Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, Wikipedia) there are two ways to cite them
- Some websites have an archived version that will not change (Wikipedia) in this case a retrieval date is not needed just include the archived URL
- For websites without an archived URL you must include the retrieval date at the end of the citation, for example after the source Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://websiteURL
- Note that not all online sources will be cited as a website, for example online journals and periodicals will be cited as a journal not a website, make sure to use the proper format for your citation
If there is no date of publication provided anywhere in the source use (n. d.). to indicate there is no date

In APA (2020) the title refers to the work you are citing. The title can fall into two categories: stand-alone works (books, reports, dissertations and theses) and works that are part of a larger whole (periodical articles, edited book chapters, and TV or podcast episodes). The following rules will be used for the title element:

For journal articles and edited book chapters do not italicize the title or use quotation marks, and capitalized only the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any proper nouns
For books, reports, webpages and websites italicize the title and capitalize the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any proper nouns
- With books and reports include any additional information in parenthesis after the title, for example (12^th ed.).
  - do not put this in italics, only the title will be italicized
  - put a period after the closing parenthesis

The source is the larger whole that contains the article, episode, or chapter that we are citing. Sources will fall into the same two categories mentioned above, stand-alone and works that are part of a larger whole. The source element will have one or two parts depending on the source, for example a book will have one source (the publisher) but a journal will have two (journal information and DOI). The DOI is the digital object identifier that links directly to an article. The following rules are for the formatting of the source element:

Periodical sources (journal, magazine, newspaper, or blog)
- Capitalize the title of the periodical in title case (all major words capitalized), for example Journal of American Ethnic History
- Reproduce the title of the periodical exactly as show on the cited work. Do not use your own abbreviations for the periodical title, the only time you will use an abbreviation is when the official title includes it.
- Italicize the volume number.
- Include the issue number, the issue number will not be in italics. The issue number will be in parenthesis and immediately after the volume number (no space). There will be a comma after the issue number.
- Include the page numbers and put a period after the last number, do not use p or pp just list the numbers, for example 135-146.
- The last part of the periodical information is the DOI, it should always start https://doi.org/xxxxxxx
Edited book chapter and Reference work entry sources
- Only used if citation does not fall under the book citation format mentioned previously
- For works with editors write In followed by the initials and surnames (not inverted) before the source. If there is one editor follow that name with (Ed.), if there are two or more use (Eds.) followed by a comma. Add the title of the reference work or book in italics, the page numbers (abbreviated pp.) in parenthesis and without italics and end with a period.
- Example: Author A. A. (date). Title of the chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. xx-xx). Publisher.

In-text Citations

There are two ways that you can cite a source in your paper. An in-text citation has a few elements, the author’s name, date of publication, and if you are directly quoting a source include the page number or the paragraph number if it’s a website.

You can either use a parenthetical citation or a narrative citation. A parenthetical citation is in parenthesis at the end of the paraphrase or quote. “Both the author and the date, separated by a comma, appear in parenthesis for a parenthetical citation” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 263). Note that the period ending the sentence will come after the in-text citation. A narrative citation will have the author’s name in the text and the year of publication in parenthesis. According to the American Psychological Association (2020) if the author is in the text then the date of publication should appear in parenthesis immediately after the author’s name. In this case the author is the American Psychological Association and the year of publication is 2020.

If you have two listed authors for a source you will separate them with an ampersand, for example (Schott & Monypeny, 2021). When you have three or more authors you will use the first author’s last name and et al., for example (Schott et al., 2021). Note that in your reference list you cannot use et al., you must list all of the authors.