APA 7th edition citation reference
The American Psychological Association (APA) style, 7th edition, is the dominant citation system in the social sciences, education and nursing. Every reference-list entry follows the same four-element order: Author, Date, Title, Source. This tool gives a copyable template and a worked example for each common source type, plus the rules for in-text citations.
How it works
APA separates a brief in-text citation from a full reference-list entry. In text you give the
author and year — parenthetical (Smith, 2020) or narrative Smith (2020) — adding a page
number for direct quotes. The reference list then maps that author–year to a full entry. The
four elements are punctuated consistently: the author block ends in a period, the date sits in
parentheses, the title is sentence-cased (only the first word, first word after a colon, and
proper nouns capitalised), and the source names the container (journal, publisher or site) and
a DOI/URL. Two authors are joined with an ampersand; three or more collapse to “et al.” in text.
Tips and notes
- Italicize the titles of standalone works (books, reports) and the names of journals; do not italicize article or chapter titles.
- Use a full DOI link (
https://doi.org/...) when available; only add a “Retrieved from” date for pages designed to change without an archived version. - Each reference-list entry uses a hanging indent (first line flush left, subsequent lines indented). Always confirm edge cases against the official Publication Manual.