APA Citation Guide: APA 7th Edition Format Made Clear
APA is the citation style for psychology, education, nursing, and most of the social sciences, and it has been the dominant style in those fields since the 1950s. The current edition is the seventh, released in October 2019, and almost every rule below is keyed to that revision. If you are writing for a course in one of those disciplines, this is the style your instructor expects.
The shortest version of APA: author and year in the text, full reference at the back, sentence case for article titles, title case for journal names, hanging indent, double-spaced throughout.
What APA is and when you’ll use it
APA evolved from a 1929 Psychological Bulletin article that ran seven pages and proposed standardizing how psychologists reported research. A century later, the manual runs 428 pages and governs how millions of papers across psychology, education, nursing, and the social sciences attribute their sources. The rules are pickier than MLA’s and less footnote-heavy than Chicago’s, which makes APA a good fit for evidence-driven writing where the who and the when matter more than the where in the text.
The style is maintained by the American Psychological Association, which publishes the Publication Manual through its own press. The seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2020) was the first major revision in a decade and introduced enough changes that older drafts cited in APA 6 format need updating before submission. Most graduate programs in psychology, education, and the health sciences now require APA 7; if your syllabus says “APA” without a number, assume 7.
You’ll see APA outside the social sciences too. Many business and nursing journals use it, undergraduate composition courses sometimes assign it, and some interdisciplinary journals accept it alongside Chicago. When in doubt, check the journal’s instructions for authors or the assignment rubric. The mechanics below are the same regardless of the discipline.
In-text citations
APA’s in-text citation format is author–date: the author’s surname and the year of publication, separated by a comma, in parentheses at the end of the sentence. The reader scans the parenthetical, then flips to the reference list to find the full source. The author and year in the in-text citation must match the first author and year in the reference list entry exactly.
One author
Cite the surname and the year. If the author’s name appears in the sentence, the year goes in parentheses immediately after the name and the rest of the citation does not repeat.
Parenthetical: Working memory capacity correlates with reading comprehension across age groups (Chen, 2021).
Narrative: Chen (2021) found that working memory capacity correlates with reading comprehension across age groups.
Two authors
Both surnames appear in every citation. In parenthetical citations use an ampersand; in narrative citations use the word and.
Parenthetical: (Lin & Patel, 2022)
Narrative: Lin and Patel (2022) argue that cross-modal attention emerges earlier than previously believed.
Three or more authors
Use the first author’s surname followed by et al. on the very first citation and every citation after that. This is the rule the seventh edition changed: APA 6 wanted you to spell out the first three to five names on first mention, then switch to et al. later. APA 7 picked simpler over more informative because nobody remembers what they did at first mention three pages later.
First and every subsequent citation: (Goldstein et al., 2024)
If two different sources would shorten to the same et al. form, write out enough surnames to distinguish them, then add et al. once the citation is unambiguous.
Organization as author
Spell out the organization the first time, optionally introducing an abbreviation, and use the abbreviation thereafter.
First: (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020)
Subsequent: (APA, 2020)
Treat government agencies, professional societies, and corporate authors the same way. If the abbreviation is widely known and used in your discipline, introducing it on first mention is appropriate; if not, spell out the full name every time.
No named author
When a work has no identified author, move the title into the author slot. In the in-text citation, use a short form of the title in quotation marks for articles and web pages, and italicize titles of standalone works such as books and reports.
Web article with no author: (“Cognitive Load and Curriculum Design,” 2023)
Book or report with no author: (Reading Proficiency and Learning Loss, 2023)
No date
If the source genuinely has no publication date, use n.d. (lowercase, with periods, no space). The same abbreviation appears in the reference list entry.
Example: (Alvarez, n.d.)
Reserve n.d. for sources where the date is truly absent. A copyright year at the bottom of a web page counts as a date. A “last updated” timestamp counts. Reach for n.d. only when nothing dateable appears anywhere.
Direct quotes
Direct quotes require a page number. For sources without pages, give the reader a way to find the passage: a paragraph number, a section heading, or a timestamp for video and audio. Place the page or location information after the year.
Short quote: Working memory is “a flexible mental workspace, not a fixed bin of slots” (Chen, 2021, p. 47).
Quote from a website without page numbers: Alvarez (2023) writes that reading comprehension “outruns vocabulary growth in elementary readers” (para. 4).
Quotes of 40 words or more become block quotes: indented from the left margin, no quotation marks, with the citation after the closing punctuation.
Citing multiple sources at once
When a single parenthetical points to multiple sources, list them alphabetically by first author’s surname and separate them with semicolons.
Example: Three studies converge on this pattern (Chen, 2021; Goldstein et al., 2024; Lin & Patel, 2022).
Two works by the same first author appear in chronological order, oldest first. If you cite two works by the same author published in the same year, distinguish them with lowercase letters (2024a, 2024b) in both the in-text citation and the reference list.
Reference list format
The reference list goes on its own page at the end of the paper, with the word References centered and bolded at the top. Every source you cited in the text must appear here, and every entry here must be cited at least once in the text. Personal communications (emails, interviews you conducted) are an exception: cite them in the text but omit them from the reference list.
Entries are alphabetized by the first author’s surname. The whole page is double-spaced — within entries and between them — and each entry uses a hanging indent of 0.5 inches, so the first line is flush left and any continuation lines are indented. Most word processors apply hanging indents through the paragraph formatting menu rather than through manual tabs.
The seventh edition of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020) prefers DOIs over URLs when both exist. A DOI is a permanent identifier; a URL can rot. Format DOIs as full hyperlinks (https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412) rather than as the bare string. URLs appear without the Retrieved from prefix that APA 6 required, except for sources designed to change over time, such as a Wikipedia article or a live data dashboard.
The trickiest format detail is capitalization. APA uses sentence case for article and chapter titles — only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalized. It uses title case for journal names, book titles when they appear as standalone works, and report titles. The rule is asymmetric and feels arbitrary, but it has a reason: the journal is a proper noun (one specific publication) while the article title is a description. Get the asymmetry wrong and the reference list looks amateur. The volume number is italicized along with the journal name; the issue number is in parentheses and not italicized. Page ranges use an en dash, not a hyphen.
Source-type examples
The references below use the fixture data referenced throughout this guide and show each common source type formatted exactly as APA 7 prescribes. Render them double-spaced with a hanging indent in your own document.
| Source type | Reference list entry |
|---|---|
| Book (single author) | Chen, M. S. (2021). The architecture of working memory. Cambridge University Press. |
| Chapter in edited book | Lin, D. K., & Patel, H. J. (2022). Cross-modal attention in early development. In R. T. Morrison (Ed.), Handbook of developmental cognition (pp. 142–168). Routledge. |
| Journal article with DOI | Goldstein, A., Ramanathan, P., & O’Connor, L. (2024). Sleep consolidation effects on procedural learning in adolescents. Journal of Cognitive Development, 19(2), 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412 |
| Web article (no DOI) | Alvarez, S. (2023, March 12). How working memory predicts reading comprehension. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/working-memory-reading-comprehension |
| Government report | U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. (2023). Reading proficiency and learning loss in U.S. fourth-graders, 2019–2022 (NCES 2023-145). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2023145 |
| Conference paper | Tanaka, Y., & Hoffmann, M. (2022, November 4–6). A unified model of attention in dual-task performance [Paper presentation]. 63rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, MA, United States. |
| Doctoral dissertation (published) | Kowalski, E. R. (2020). Memory consolidation in bilingual speakers: An fMRI investigation [Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. |
A few details to notice across the table. Book and report publishers appear without a location (APA 7 dropped the city-and-state convention that APA 6 used). The chapter entry inverts the chapter authors’ names but presents the editor in regular order with the Ed. abbreviation in parentheses. The journal volume is italicized; the issue number is not. The conference paper carries a bracketed description after the title to clarify that it isn’t a regular article. The dissertation includes the institution in brackets and names the database the work was retrieved from. If you’re entering one of these into the generator, the tool will assemble the bracketed descriptors and the hanging indent for you, but the underlying logic is what’s shown above.
Common mistakes
These five errors account for most of the marks students lose on APA assignments. Each shows the wrong version above the right one.
Title case in an article title. Wrong: Goldstein, A., Ramanathan, P., & O’Connor, L. (2024). Sleep Consolidation Effects on Procedural Learning in Adolescents. Right: Goldstein, A., Ramanathan, P., & O’Connor, L. (2024). Sleep consolidation effects on procedural learning in adolescents.
Missing italics on the journal name and volume. Wrong: Journal of Cognitive Development, 19(2), 87–104. Right: Journal of Cognitive Development, 19(2), 87–104.
”Retrieved from” before a URL. Wrong: Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412 Right: https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412
The Retrieved from prefix is reserved for sources that are expected to change after retrieval. A DOI never qualifies; a journal article on a publisher’s site rarely does; a Wikipedia entry does.
Spelling out all author names on first mention for three-or-more-author sources. Wrong (first mention): Goldstein, Ramanathan, and O’Connor (2024) found… Right (every mention): Goldstein et al. (2024) found…
APA 6 did want the long form on first mention. APA 7 does not. If your handout still teaches the old rule, the handout predates 2019.
Using a hyphen in a page range. Wrong: 87-104 Right: 87–104
The en dash (–) is shorter than an em dash (—) and longer than a hyphen. Most word processors auto-correct a hyphen to an en dash when it sits between numbers; if yours doesn’t, insert the character manually.
What’s new in APA 7
The seventh edition is the first major overhaul of APA since 2009, and the changes mostly run in the direction of fewer rules and more inclusive language. If you’ve worked with APA 6, these are the differences that matter.
Singular they is accepted. The seventh edition endorses singular they as both a generic pronoun (when the gender is unknown or irrelevant) and a personal pronoun (when an individual uses it). The older convention of he or she or alternating he/she across sentences is no longer recommended.
Three or more authors collapse to et al. immediately. APA 6 wanted three to five surnames spelled out on first mention; APA 7 cuts that to the first author plus et al. from the very first citation. Less informative, but the reader has the reference list anyway.
The author-list cutoff in references moved from 7 to 20. In a reference list entry, list up to 20 authors before using an ellipsis and the final author’s name. APA 6 stopped at 7.
Italicize the issue number? No — italicize the volume. This one trips people who half-remember. The volume number is italicized along with the journal title. The issue number sits in parentheses, not italicized. (Some style summaries online get this backward; the Publication Manual is the authority.)
”Retrieved from” is gone for most URLs. Use the bare URL or DOI. Keep Retrieved from only for resources designed to change after retrieval (Wikipedia, live dashboards, archived versions).
Publisher location is gone. APA 6 wanted “Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.” APA 7 wants just “Cambridge University Press.” This applies to books, reports, and any other source where a publisher is named.
New guidance for newer source types. APA 7 adds explicit, worked examples for software, datasets, podcasts, social media posts, and YouTube videos. Earlier editions either skipped these or buried them in supplementary materials. If you’re citing a TikTok in a class paper — and people do — the seventh edition has a template.
The remaining mechanics — author–date in-text citations, alphabetized references with hanging indents, double-spacing throughout, sentence case for article titles — are unchanged from APA 6. The seventh edition refines and simplifies; it does not reinvent.