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What Is APA Style?
APA (American Psychological Association) style is the dominant citation format in the social sciences, psychology, nursing, education, and business. The 7th edition was published in 2020 and introduced significant changes that simplified several conventions, expanded guidance for digital sources, and brought the style into alignment with contemporary norms around inclusive language.
The format uses an author–date in-text system: every in-text citation contains the author's surname and the publication year in parentheses, pointing the reader to the full reference entry in the reference list at the end of the paper.
What Changed in APA 7th Edition
If you learned APA from the 6th edition manual, these are the changes that most affect your citations:
APA 6th (old)
- Running head required for all papers
- Publisher location required for books
- Use "[sic]" after et al. in some cases
- DOI formatted as "doi:..."
- Up to 6 authors listed; 7+ → et al.
- Two spaces after a period required
- No guidance on singular they
APA 7th (current)
- Running head only for manuscripts for publication
- Publisher location omitted
- Cleaner et al. rules (3+ authors in text)
- DOI formatted as a hyperlink: https://doi.org/…
- Up to 20 authors listed; 21+ → et al.
- One space after a period (student default)
- Singular they formally endorsed as gender-neutral
In-Text Citations
Every borrowed idea, quotation, or paraphrase requires an in-text citation. The citation appears either inside parentheses at the end of the sentence, or as part of the sentence itself (narrative citation).
Parenthetical vs. Narrative
| Type | Format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Parenthetical | (Author, Year) | Adolescent self-regulation improves with structured sleep schedules (Walker, 2017). |
| Narrative | Author (Year) | Walker (2017) demonstrated that adolescent self-regulation improves with structured sleep. |
| Direct quote | (Author, Year, p. X) | "Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do" (Walker, 2017, p. 9). |
| No author | (Title fragment, Year) | ("Study Reveals," 2022) |
| No date | (Author, n.d.) | (NHS, n.d.) |
Multiple Authors
| Number of authors | First citation | Subsequent citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 author | (Smith, 2021) | (Smith, 2021) |
| 2 authors | (Smith & Jones, 2021) | (Smith & Jones, 2021) |
| 3+ authors | (Smith et al., 2021) | (Smith et al., 2021) |
| Group/organisation | (World Health Organization [WHO], 2022) | (WHO, 2022) |
If two different works both abbreviate to (Smith et al., 2021), include enough additional authors to distinguish them: (Smith, Jones, et al., 2021) vs. (Smith, Brown, et al., 2021).
Block Quotations
Quotations of 40 or more words are formatted as a block quote: indented 1.27 cm (0.5 inch) from the left margin, no quotation marks, with the citation placed in parentheses after the final punctuation mark.
The decimation of sleep throughout industrialised nations is having a catastrophic impact on our health, our life expectancy, our safety, the education of our children, and the efficiency and productivity of our economy. (p. 4)
Reference List Rules
- Begin the reference list on a new page, titled References (centred, bold).
- Entries are listed alphabetically by the first author's surname.
- Use a hanging indent: the first line is flush left; subsequent lines are indented 1.27 cm.
- Double-space all entries (no extra blank line between entries).
- All major words in journal titles and book titles follow sentence case (only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised).
- Journal names are italicised; volume numbers are italicised; issue numbers are not.
- DOIs must be formatted as active hyperlinks: https://doi.org/xxxxx
Journal Articles
Books and Chapters
Do not include the city and country of publication for books. Simply list the publisher name. "New York, NY: Penguin" becomes "Penguin Books."
Websites and Online Sources
APA 7th only requires a retrieval date when the content of the page is expected to change over time (e.g., a wiki article, a live database). For stable webpages, omit the retrieval date.
Dissertations and Theses
Common APA 7th Errors
| Error | Incorrect | Correct |
|---|---|---|
| Capitalising title words | The Psychology Of Learning | The psychology of learning |
| Old DOI format | doi:10.1037/0000000 | https://doi.org/10.1037/0000000 |
| Publisher location | New York, NY: Guilford Press | Guilford Press |
| No page number in direct quote | (Kahneman, 2011) | (Kahneman, 2011, p. 24) |
| Missing italics on volume | Journal, 5(2) | Journal, 5(2) |
| Retrieved from URL | Retrieved from https://… | https://… (no "Retrieved from") |
| Ampersand in narrative citation | Smith & Jones (2021) found… | Smith and Jones (2021) found… |
Use "&" (ampersand) only inside parentheses: (Smith & Jones, 2021). In running prose — narrative citations — always spell out "and": Smith and Jones (2021) found…