APA 7th Edition Reference and Citation Guide

APA Style comes from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The current edition is the 7th (2020), and APA's official Common Reference Examples handout, last revised in March 2026, is still based on it. APA is the default style in psychology, education, nursing, business and most of the social sciences, and many Korean journals build their house rules on top of it.

APA is an author–date system. In the text you cite (Author, Year); the full details go in a References list at the end. The year sits right after the author because in empirical fields when a study appeared matters. To build a single entry, open the reference generator and choose APA.

1. The four elements of a reference

Every APA reference, whatever the source, is built from author → date → title → source, and each element ends with a period.

A missing element is replaced, not left blank: with no author, the title moves forward; with no date, write (n.d.).

2. Authors

• Format: surname, then initials with a space between them (Weber, A. M.). Never spell out given names.
• Two to 20 authors: list every one, with a comma and an ampersand before the last. The 6th edition's seven-author rule is gone.
• 21 or more: list the first 19, insert an ellipsis (. . .), then give the final author. No ampersand before the last name, so the entry shows exactly 20 names.
• Group authors: write the full name of the organization (World Health Organization). If the author and publisher are the same, omit the publisher.
• No author: move the title into the author position, followed by the date. Use "Anonymous" only when the work is actually signed that way.
• Editors and other roles: add the role in parentheses: (Ed.), (Eds.), (Director), (Host).

3. Dates

• Journal articles, books and reports take the year only: (2020).
• Newspapers, magazines, blog posts and dated web pages take year, Month day: (2024, June 3). Months are not abbreviated.
• No date: (n.d.). Date ranges, as for conferences: (2019, August 8–11).
• Retrieval dates are the exception, not the rule. Add "Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL" only for unarchived pages designed to change over time, such as live statistics or openly edited wikis.

4. Titles

APA uses two capitalization patterns, and mixing them up is the most common error.

• Sentence case for the titles of articles, books, chapters, reports and web pages: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns.
• Title case for the names of periodicals: Journal of Educational Psychology.

Italics mark stand-alone works: books, reports, dissertations, web pages, and the periodical name plus volume number. Titles of works inside a larger whole, such as articles and chapters, get neither italics nor quotation marks. The issue number sits in roman type inside parentheses: 117(5). The title case tool helps convert English titles.

5. DOIs, URLs and page ranges

• Present a DOI as a link starting with https://doi.org/. Do not use the "doi:" label or the old http://dx.doi.org/ form.
• If a DOI exists, give it instead of a URL. Articles from academic databases without a DOI usually need no URL at all.
• Do not put a period after a DOI or URL.
• Join page ranges with an en dash and give the full second number: 772–788. Journal articles take no "pp."; chapters in edited books do: (pp. 11–26).
• For journals that use article numbers instead of pages, write "Article e0318239".

See the DOI and URL guide for more detail.

6. In-text citations

• With three or more authors, use et al. from the first citation. There is no period after et.
• Add a location for quotations or specific points: (Levenson et al., 2025, p. 42) or (pp. 42–43). For unpaginated web content, use a paragraph number (para. 4) or a section heading.
• For several works by the same author in the same year, add a, b after the year (2020a, 2020b) in both the list and the text. Assign the letters by alphabetizing the titles.
• Put several works in one parenthesis in reference-list order, separated by semicolons: (Bernstein, 2024; Taras, 2024).

Try the in-text citation generator, and compare author-count rules across styles in the et al. guide.

7. Formatting the reference list

• Title it References, bold and centered. Double-space the entire list.
• Use a 0.5-inch hanging indent for every line after the first.
• Alphabetize by the first author's surname. Works by the same author go in year order, with (n.d.) entries before dated ones; single-author entries precede multi-author entries with the same first author.
• Include only works you actually cite.

8. Examples by source type

These examples are reproduced from APA's Common Reference Examples and from Purdue OWL's APA 7 pages.

Journal article

Niepel, C., Hausen, J. E., Weber, A. M., & Möller, J. (2025). Understanding mean-level and intraindividual variability in state academic self-concept: The role of students’ trait expectancies and values. Journal of Educational Psychology, 117(5), 772–788. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000946

Book

No publisher location in the 7th edition.

Levenson, H., Jinich, S., Vaz, A., & Rousmaniere, T. (2025). Deliberate practice in emotionally focused couple therapy. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000436-000

Chapter in an edited book

Zeleke, W. A., Hughes, T. L., & Drozda, N. (2020). Home–school collaboration to promote mind–body health. In C. Maykel & M. A. Bray (Eds.), Promoting mind–body health in schools: Interventions for mental health professionals (pp. 11–26). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000157-002

Dissertation or thesis

A dissertation in a database counts as published: give the publication number and database. An unpublished one is labeled as such, with the institution in the source position.

Horvath-Plyman, M. (2018). Social media and the college student journey: An examination of how social media use impacts social capital and affects college choice, access, and transition (Publication No. 10937367) [Doctoral dissertation, New York University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Samson, J. M. (2016). Human trafficking and globalization [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Report

World Health Organization. (2025). Global report on neglected tropical diseases. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/9c4655d8-3671-4503-ae51-4a80bb44d5e0/content

Winthrop, R., Ziegler, L., Handa, R., & Fakoya, F. (2019). How playful learning can help leapfrog progress in education. Center for Universal Education at Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/how_playful_learning_can_help_leapfrog_progress_in_education.pdf

Newspaper article

Bernstein, J. (2024, June 3). The man who couldn’t stop going to college. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/magazine/benjamin-bolger-college-harvard-yale.html

Web page

The page title is italic; the site name is not. Add a retrieval date only for content that changes.

Taras, Z. (2024, May 30). Situational irony can be funny, tragic or even terrifying. HowStuffWorks. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/situational-irony.htm

Worldometer. (n.d.). Current world population. Retrieved October 17, 2025, from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Conference presentation

Davidson, R. J. (2019, August 8–11). Well-being is a skill [Conference session]. APA 2019 Convention, Chicago, IL, United States. https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/a5ea5d51/files/uploaded/APA2019_Program_190708.pdf

9. Mixing Korean and English sources

If you are submitting to a Korean journal or graduate school, its author guidelines override APA. Most are APA-based but set their own rules for Korean sources: full Korean names instead of initials, "외" in place of et al., Korean sources listed first in 가나다 order followed by English sources, and sometimes bold or 『』 instead of italics for journal names. Check the guidelines before formatting, and see the Korean journal guide.

10. Common mistakes

• Article title in title case — use sentence case; only periodical names take title case.
• Issue number in italics — only the volume is italic.
• "doi:10.1037/…" — write https://doi.org/10.1037/….
• A period after the DOI — leave it off.
• Publisher city for a book — dropped in the 7th edition.
• Listing all three authors at the first citation — use et al. from the start.
• Six names plus an ellipsis for a large team — the rule is 19 names, ellipsis, final author.
• "Retrieved" on every web page — only on pages meant to change.
• Single spacing or first-line indents in the list — double-space and use a hanging indent.
• Citations missing from the list, or list entries never cited.

For whole-document formatting, run through the thesis checklist.

Examples by source type — APA 7th

These examples are generated by this site's formatting engine from fictional sample data (not real publications).

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