APA 7 citation: in-text and reference list examples

An APA 7 citation has two parts: a short author–date citation in the text, such as (Sapolsky, 2017), and a full entry in the reference list at the end of the paper. The seventh edition of the Publication Manual (2020) appeared in late 2019, and one of its key changes is that, as this guide to in-text citations by number of authors from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab states, a source with three or more authors is cited as the first author plus “et al.” from the very first mention.

In-text citations: parenthetical and narrative

A citation is parenthetical when the names sit inside the brackets and narrative when they are part of the sentence. In a parenthetical citation an ampersand joins two authors, while a narrative citation always spells out “and”.

Only the year appears in the text, even when the list entry gives a full date, and it has to match the entry. Several works in one pair of brackets are put in alphabetical order and separated by semicolons: (Rybaczewska & Sparks, 2022; Sapolsky, 2017). A missing date becomes “n.d.”: (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). When the author is unknown, the title and year take the author’s place. Works by the same authors from the same year are told apart by letters added to the year (2017a, 2017b), and works that would shorten to the same “et al.” form get as many surnames as are needed to tell them apart. A repeated citation is shown in full, not cut down to a page number, because “ibid.” is not used in APA Style.

Quotations, paraphrases and secondary sources

A direct quotation always carries a page number, or another locator if the work has none. APA Style writes “p.” for one page, “pp.” with an en dash for a range and a comma for pages that do not run on: p. 25, pp. 34–36, pp. 67, 72. A quotation of fewer than 40 words stays in the sentence inside quotation marks, and the end punctuation follows the closing bracket of the citation. From 40 words the quotation becomes a block: no quotation marks, a new line, the whole block indented 0.5 in. (1.27 cm), and no full stop after the closing bracket.

A paraphrase needs only author and year, though a page or paragraph number is allowed when it helps readers find the passage in a long work such as a book. Without page numbers, a paragraph number such as para. 6 or a section heading serves instead.

A source known only through another is cited with “as cited in”, and only the work actually read goes in the reference list: (Rabbitt, 1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014) puts Lyon et al. in the list and leaves Rabbitt out. APA Style asks for such secondary citations to be used sparingly, for example when the original is out of print, unavailable or available only in a language the writer does not understand.

Building a reference list entry

Every entry answers four questions, and the answers are its four elements: author, date, title and source.

1. Who is responsible? Surname first, then initials, with a comma between authors and an ampersand before the last. Up to 20 authors are listed. With 21 or more, the first 19 are followed by an ellipsis and the final author. A group author is spelled out in full and is not abbreviated in the list.
2. When? Most entries use the year alone, and some source types add month and day: (2018, July) or (2020, August 26). With no date, write (n.d.).
3. What is it called? Sentence case. Stand-alone works such as books, reports and webpages are in italics, articles and chapters are not. An edition goes in brackets after the title, not in italics: (3rd ed.).
4. Where can it be found? The journal with volume, issue and pages, or the publisher, or the website, ending with a DOI or URL.

The list starts on a new page headed “References” in bold and centred. Entries are alphabetised by the first word and given a 0.5 in. hanging indent, and the whole list is double-spaced. A DOI is written as a link, https://doi.org/ followed by the number, with no full stop after it and no “Retrieved from” before it. If a work has both a DOI and a URL, only the DOI is given. The publisher’s location is left out.

Reference list examples: book, articles and webpage

The entries are examples from APA Style’s own reference pages, so a live webpage may differ from them.

The agency named on the page is the author, and its parent bodies move into the source element as the publisher.

APA 6 and APA 7: what changed

Some courses still ask for the sixth edition. Massey University’s comparison of the two editions lists these differences, and the examples are its own.

“Retrieved from” survives only with a retrieval date, which APA Style reserves for unarchived pages designed to change over time. The course decides which edition applies, and Massey University advises asking the lecturer or course coordinator when it is unclear.