The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition) outlines the rules for APA style. APA is widely used across the social and behavioral sciences, including education and business.

APA style prioritizes the publication date and the author's surname. This reflects the importance placed on recent information in the fields that use this system. In fact, this system requires you to include a publication date in in-text citations, right in the body of the paper.

APA style endorses the singular pronoun "they" because it is inclusive of all people and helps writers avoid making assumptions about gender. If you do not know the pronouns of a person being described, reword the sentence to avoid a pronoun or use "they".

The Publication Manual is available in the Valley Library at BF76.7.P83 2020 .

There are certain basic things you need to cite almost all sources, using just about any format:

• The AUTHOR (or creator) of the work.  This may be one person, many people, a group or an organization.
• The TITLE OF THE WORK itself.  The article title, the book title, the video title, etc.
• The PUBLICATION DATE.

If your specific source was published as part of a larger work, then you also need the TITLE OF THE LARGER WORK. 

This could be a newspaper, magazine or journal (if your source is an article), a book (if your source is a chapter or image), etc.

Examples for the in-text entry and reference list entry for an entire book are linked below. These examples come from very useful web resources noted elsewhere on this guide.

• Book in-text citation
  • (Calfee & Valencia, 1991)
• Book in Reference List (link to Purdue OWL example)
• Ebooks (link to APA Style Blog)

The basic format for a journal article citation in APA style is as follows (pay attention to capitalization in the article and journal titles and to where italics appear).

In-text Citation:

(AuthorLastName, Year)

Reference List:

Example

In-text Citation (3-5 authors)

(Bull, Levine, Black, Schmiege, & Santelli, 2012)

Reference List

So where do you find this information on the article?  See the image below for one example.

The basic format for a website citation in APA style is as follows (please follow the guidance from the APA Style Blog entry about when to use Format Description).

In-text citation:

(Author, Year)

Reference List:

Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Title of document [Format description]. Retrieved from http://URL

Example Citation

In-text Citation:

     (Mayo Clinic, 2014)

Reference List:

How to Cite a Class [or Class Materials] in APA Style

How to Create a Reference for a YouTube Video (APA Style)