LibGuides: Citing Your Sources in APA 7th: The Basics

About APA 7th

This guide is a quick introduction to the APA 7th edition citation style. APA is a citation style developed by the American Psychological Association and is primarily used in the Social Sciences.

APA Resources

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2020 (Reference)
Copies are available at the Reference Desk

Pierce Library's APA 7th Quick Citation Guide
Downloadable PDF with sample citations (including in-text) for different types of sources and a sample Works Cited page.

APA Style
The official APA Style website from the American Psychological Association.
Purdue OWL APA 7 Formatting & Style Guide
Very thorough overview of APA 7th with examples for how to construct both in-text and Reference List entries.

APA Video Introduction

Video from CSU Dominguez Hills University Library.

In-Text Citations

In-text citations are short citations in parentheses that you will include in the body of your paper or assignment. They appear at the end of a sentence or paragraph in which you have either directly quoted or paraphrased an outside source.

Basic Format:

(Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

If you mention the author's name in the sentence or paragraph, include the publication year in parentheses directly after the author's name, and then include only the page number after the quote. If a source does not have page numbers, such as a webpage, you may skip the page number.

Examples:

"Culture forms our beliefs" (Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 38).

According to Anzaldúa (2012), "culture forms our beliefs" (p. 38).

I'm citing...

One Author

Format:

(Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 30)

Two Authors

Format:

(Last Name & Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Wykes & Gunter, 2012, p. 53)

Three or More Authors

Format:

(First Author's Last Name et al., Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Chan et al., 2022, p. 97)

Group or Corporate Author

Format:

(Group Name [Abbreviation if Any], Year, p. Page Number)

If a group author uses an abbreviation, you can introduce the abbreviation in brackets the first time you cite them; in subsequent citations, you can use only the abbreviation.

Examples:

(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation, 1996, p. 230)

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2019)
After the first citation: (CDC, 2019).

If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.

No Author

Format:

(Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work," Year, p. Page Number)

Heads up! For in-text citations, shorten any titles to the first 2-4 words of the title.

Examples:

(Fair Housing, 1985, p. 15)

("How to Teach," 2016)

The first example above refers to a book, so the title is italicized to reflect that it is a longer work. The second example refers to a webpage, so the title appears in quotation marks to reflect that it is a shorter work, and we also skip the page number since websites don't have page numbers.

For more guidelines and examples, check out the Purdue OWL In-Text Citation Guide.

Reference List

Your Reference List will appear at the end of your paper or project, and will contain a list of citations in alphabetical order corresponding to the in-text citations you used in the body of your project. Each citation will include the complete publication information for that source, so that anyone may find and check the sources.

The format for your citations will differ depending on the type of source you are citing. Please select your source type below for detailed instructions.