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.

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.

Purdue OWL

Purdue OWL APA Style Guide
Online APA reference- with instructions & examples for most citation types. OWL also has a collection of APA formatting video tutorials on YouTube.

Online Resources from APAStyle.org

APA Style Blog
If the manual does not answer your questions consider using the blog's Contact Us page. You can even follow them on Twitter or Facebook.

Best of the APA Style Blog: 2015 Edition

Learning APA Style

Watch the Basics of APA Style tutorial.

APA Formatting and Style Guide
From OWL - the Purdue (University) Online Writing Lab.

Citing Online Sources in APA

Citing Online sources:

APA Reference List: Electronic Sources (Web Publications) - Purdue OWL

Citing Websites:

APA Style Blog: Visual of egg

What to Do When Information Is Missing: Table

Sample APA Paper with Annotations

APA Formatted Paper

Here is a sample paper provided by APA.

For every style rule, there is a comment highlighted in the paper that tells you where to find the discussion of the rule in the APA Style Manual.

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.
Capitalization: for book or article titles, only capitalize the first word of the title and subtitle. Also capitalize proper nouns.