Skip to Main Content

Citing Sources in APA Style 7th edition: Home

How to cite sources using APA style 7th edition.

Introduction

APA (American Psychological Association) Style for writing papers and citing sources is most often used in the social science and natural science fields.

For formatting information and examples, see In-Text Citations, and References Page, in the tabs above.

Changes for the 7th edition include:

  • Running head not required for student papers, simplified for professionals.
  • Use only one space after a period.
  • Use "they" to refer to a person who prefers that pronoun or when the gender of the person is unknown or irrelevant.
  • Use double quotation marks to highlight a unique example (instead of italics).
  • In-text citations from three or more authors have been shortened to the name of the first author plus "et al."
  • Include up to 20 authors in a reference entry before names are omitted with an ellipses.
  • Always enter DOIs as a URL: https://doi.org/xxxxx
  • URLs can be plain text, or blue and underlined.  "Retrieved from" should not be included.
  • Book references do not need the publisher location.

Useful Resources