APA Citation Format (7th Edition): In-Text & Reference Examples

APA 7th edition citation generator

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Citation style

Paste a DOI or a doi.org link. Most journal articles print theirs on the first page.

Formatting by citeproc-js and the Citation Style Language project. Credits and licences

APA format at a glance

In the text: author and year.

Parenthetical: Storybooks differ in the emotions they portray (Grady et al., 2019).
Narrative: Grady et al. (2019) compared storybooks across groups.
Direct quote: (Grady et al., 2019, p. 210)

In the reference list: author, date, title, source.

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Source	APA 7 reference format
Journal article	Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx
Book	Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book (edition). Publisher. DOI or URL
Chapter in edited book	Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher.
Web page	Author or Organization. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL

Number of authors	Parenthetical citation	Narrative citation
One	(Jackson, 2019)	Jackson (2019)
Two	(Svendsen & Løber, 2020)	Svendsen and Løber (2020)
Three or more	(Grady et al., 2019)	Grady et al. (2019)
Group author	(World Health Organization, 2018)	World Health Organization (2018)

Every work named in this table is real: each one is a reference example published on the APA Style website, and the full references appear below.

The Official Source

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition (2019) is the definitive guide for APA style. Published by the American Psychological Association, it's available in print, spiral-bound, and ebook formats at apastyle.apa.org.

The 7th edition introduced significant updates including flexible font options, new sample papers for students, updated bias-free language guidelines, and more than 100 new reference examples.

Quick Overview

APA style uses an author-date citation system with two components:

In-text citations — brief references in your paper pointing to sources
Reference list — full source details at the end of your paper

In-Text Citations

Place the author's last name and publication year in parentheses. Add page numbers when quoting directly.

One Author

A second edition of a textbook on the psychology of prejudice has been published (Jackson, 2019).
Jackson (2019) is the second edition of that book.

Two Authors

Use "and" in narrative citations, "&" in parenthetical citations.

Svendsen and Løber (2020) wrote a one-hour guide to academic writing.
A one-hour guide to academic writing is available as an ebook (Svendsen & Løber, 2020).

Three or More Authors

Use the first author's name followed by "et al."

One study compared storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States (Grady et al., 2019).

Direct Quotes

Include page numbers for direct quotations.

Effective teams can be difficult to describe because "high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along another" (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470).

This sentence is APA Style's own example of a short quotation, from its quotations page.

No Author

Use the title (shortened if necessary) in place of the author.

Parenthetical: ("Oil Painting," 2019)
Narrative: "Oil Painting" (2019)

These are APA Style's citations for its Wikipedia example, which has no author: Oil painting. (2019, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oil_painting&oldid=929802398

Reference List Basics

Your reference list appears on a new page titled "References" (bold, centered). Format each entry with a hanging indent (first line flush left, subsequent lines indented 0.5 inches).

Basic Structure

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher. DOI or URL

Journal Article

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Book

Jackson, L. M. (2019). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000

Book by Two Authors (ebook with a stable URL)

Svendsen, S., & Løber, L. (2020). The big picture/Academic writing: The one-hour guide (3rd digital ed.). Hans Reitzel Forlag. https://thebigpicture-academicwriting.digi.hansreitzel.dk/

Website

World Health Organization. (2018, May 24). The top 10 causes of death. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

Chapter in Edited Book

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016

Key 7th Edition Changes

The APA 7th edition (2019) made several important updates from the 6th edition:

No location required — publisher city/state is no longer needed
DOIs always included — present as https://doi.org/xxxxx format
Up to 20 authors — list all authors (previously capped at 7)
Singular "they" — endorsed as a gender-neutral pronoun
Student papers — new dedicated formatting guidelines
Running head simplified — only required for professional papers, not student papers

Common Mistakes to Avoid

DOI formatting — use the https://doi.org/ format, not "doi:" or bare numbers
Capitalization — only capitalize the first word of titles and subtitles (plus proper nouns) in references
Italics — italicize book titles, journal names, and volume numbers—not article titles
Ampersand vs. "and" — use "&" in parenthetical citations and reference lists; use "and" in narrative text
Missing retrieval dates — only include retrieval dates for sources that change over time (like wikis)

Who Uses APA Style?

APA Style began in psychology and is now used across the social and behavioral sciences, education and nursing, among other fields. Your course, department or target journal decides, so if you are unsure which style is required, ask.

Further Resources

APA Style: reference examples, the source of the reference examples on this page
APA Style: in-text citations
Purdue OWL APA guide

Accessed 21 September 2026.

Wonders formats the sources in your project in six citation styles, APA among them (the others are MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver). For psychology specifically, see what it does and does not do for a psychology review.

Frequently asked questions

How do you cite in APA format?

In the text, give the author's surname and the year: (Jackson, 2019). Add a page number for direct quotes: (Jackson, 2019, p. 45). In the reference list, write Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Source. DOI or URL. A journal article looks like this: Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

How do you cite a website in APA 7?

Author or Organization. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL. Leave out the site name when it is the same as the author. Use (n.d.) if there is no date, and add a retrieval date only for pages designed to change over time.

What is the current edition of APA?

The 7th edition of the Publication Manual, published in October 2019, is the current edition.

What's the difference between APA 6th and 7th edition?

Key changes in 7th edition include: no more “Retrieved from” before URLs (unless you need an access date), DOIs formatted as full URLs (https://doi.org/...), up to 20 authors listed before using “et al.” (previously 7), running head label removed on the title page, and more inclusive language guidelines. If your instructor doesn't specify, use 7th edition—it's the current standard.

How do I cite sources with no author?

Move the title to the author position. For in-text citations, use a shortened version of the title in quotation marks for articles ("Title of Article," Year) or italics for books (Title of Book, Year). In your reference list, alphabetize by the first significant word of the title (skip A, An, The).

How do I cite multiple sources by the same author in the same year?

Add lowercase letters after the year: (Author, 2024a) and (Author, 2024b). In your reference list, order these alphabetically by title and assign letters accordingly. The first reference alphabetically by title gets "a."

Do I need page numbers for paraphrases in APA?

Page numbers are required for direct quotes but only encouraged for paraphrases; your instructor may ask for them on every citation. When paraphrasing a specific passage, including the page number helps readers locate the source material. For general references to an entire work, page numbers aren't needed.

Should I use “et al.” for two authors?

No. Always list both authors every time: (Svendsen & Løber, 2020). Use “et al.” only for works with three or more authors—and use it from the first citation onward.