Research Guides: Citing Your Sources: APA

APA Citations Online SkillShop

APA Citations
Learn about paraphrasing, quoting and how to create citations properly in APA format. Approximate length: 1 hour.

American Psychological Association Style

The American Psychological Association (APA) has established a style that it uses in all of the books and journals that it publishes. Many others working in the social and behavioral sciences have adopted this style as their standard as well.

APA's style rules and guidelines are set out in their publication manual:

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by American Psychological Association
Call Number: Reserve Desk, first floor BF76.7 .P83 2020
ISBN: 9781433832161
Publication Date: 2019-10-01

Citation styles change over time. Be sure to only use the most recent resources that reflect the current edition. The current edition for APA is the 7th.

APA Manual 7th edition: The most notable changes
The newest version of the Publication Manual has some notable changes compared to the 6th edition. This article highlights some that may be helpful.

APA Style

APA Style
This guide about using the APA Publication Manual in your work. This comprehensive website includes sample papers, examples of citations, formatting, tables and figures and the APA Style Blog, where you'll find answers to common questions.

Online Resources from APAStyle.org

APA Style
This is a great resource for examples of how to cite different kinds of resources, to get an understanding of the differences between in-text citation and the reference list, and also better understand what plagiarism is and how to prevent it when using APA style. The APA manual is more in-depth with explanation, but this is a good reference for many common citation questions.

About APA Style

Watch the Tutorials and Webinars on APA Style.

The APA Style website also has their APA Style Blog, which includes blog posts answering questions that come up for APA citation that are commonly asked.

Purdue OWL

Purdue OWL APA Style Guide
Online APA reference- with instructions & examples for most citation types.

Citing Online Sources in APA

Citing Online sources:

APA Reference List: Electronic Sources (7th edition) - Purdue OWL

Citing Websites:

APA Style Blog: Visual of egg

Citing Images, Videos & Other Media

Clip Art or Stock Image References
If you are using images in your slide presentation, paper or project, APA requires copyright attribution rather than typical in-text citations. Quick note: if your image is free to reproduce with no attribution required, do not include any attribution.
APA Style Guide to Common Reference Examples
This quick reference guide (pdf download) includes examples of almost every kind of source, including podcasts, infographics, Tweets, and more!
Reference Examples: AudioVisual Media
In-depth list of styles for audio and video. This page also includes styles for data sets, social media posts, online forums, and more.
How to cite a single song or track reference
How to cite a music album reference

Common APA Errors

Below is a reminder of some common formatting details that sometimes are overlooked.

Reference list:
- Line Spacing: double-space the reference list.
- Hanging indent: indent all but the first line of each entry (the opposite of how you indent a paragraph).
- Italicization: book titles, journal titles and volume number are italicized; do not italicize article titles.
- DOI: for electronic materials, if you have a doi#, you do not need to include the URL.
- You do not need to include which database you found the article in (this is sometimes included if you use an auto-generated citation from a database--you should always double check auto-generated citations for accuracy).
Capitalization: for book or article titles, only capitalize the first word of the title and subtitle. Also capitalize proper nouns.