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APA 7th Edition Guide: APA-How We Cite

APA Guide

dog fetching newspapersThe following information includes EXAMPLES of how to cite different sources in APA style. Careful attention is paid to formatting and the order of the information.

If you are using a citation builder, double-check your work against this guide.

 

Ideally, your APA reference (at the end of your paper) will consist of this information:

Author. (date). Title. Source.

  • The author can be an individual or individuals or a group author.
  • The date can be a year or more specific (year, month day) or no date (n.d.).
  • The title is written in sentence case (first word has a capital letter, the rest are lowercase unless it's a proper noun).
  • The source can be a website, journal name,  URL/DOI, online publishing site (YouTube), etc. 

Citing a Source Within a Source (Secondhand or Secondary Source)

Academic articles, books, and other sources often refer to previously published articles, books and other sources. You'll usually see the author of the previous source in the sentence or in the intext citation.

You will NOT include this source as if you read the study yourself.

For example, there is a paper written by Anderson that is referred to in an article written by Robb. You read the article by Robb; NOT the paper by Anderson. This is what you write:

According to Anderson's 2013 study (as cited in Robb, 2019), learning APA "can be difficult, especially when students are focusing on content area and not writing styles" (p. 33). In addition, some elements of APA seem subjective to students (Anderson, 2013 as cited in Robb, 2019).

In the reference list, you include the article you read; not the article you read about.

​

Robb, L. (2019). Librarianship in community colleges. Journal of Libraries, 110(2), 31-35. https://doil.something/something/000000. 

When Parts of a Citation are Missing

chart of how to handle citations when elements are missing

Table 9.1 on page 284 in Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association Seventh Edition.

Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers

If you use direct quotes, you must include some way for the reader to find the information. In a source with page numbers, you include the page number in the in-text citation (Robb, 2021, p. 88). 

Many sources from the web don't have page numbers. You should choose the approach that will best help your reader.

  • Provide a heading or section name: 

For people who know that they have a serious allergic reaction to some substance, it is recommended they wear a medical alert bracelet to let  "others know that you have a serious allergy in case you have a reaction and you're unable to communicate" (Mayo Clinic, 2021, Prevention section). 

This is the reference for the end of your paper

Mayo Clinic. (2021). Allergies. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/allergies/symptoms-causes/syc-20351497

  • Provide a paragraph number:

According to an article on NPR, after the Covid-19 pandemic, many people are "rethinking what work means to them, how they are valued, and how they spend their time" (Hsu, 2021, para 4).

This is the reference for the end of your paper

Hsu, A. (2021, June 24). As the pandemic recedes, millions of workers are saying 'I quit.' NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1007914455/as-the-pandemic-recedes-millions-of-workers-are-saying-i-quit 

  • Provide a time stamp.

The destruction is even more important when one realizes that "around a third of all Australian fish spend at least some time on the Great Barrier Reef" (Films Media Group, 2018, 7:11). 

Here is the reference to the film

Films Media Group. (2018). Can we save the reef? https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=99147&xtid=186717