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Citation Styles: APA - American Psychological Association

This guide gives an overview of the most common Citation styles along with information on parts of sources and DOIs

Introducing APA 7th Ed.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition (2020) has now been published to make sure to know if your professor is expecting you to conform to the new citation standards.  There is now a separate 7th ed. LibGuide (see link below) for information on the new citation style.

APA 7th ed. Citation Style Guide Header

Books

Video

APA 7th Edition Changes Cheat Sheet

Bias-free language

  • Guidelines are being added to use bias-free language when referring to people or entities. This means using the word “they” or “their” instead of gender pronouns like “he”, “she”, “his” and “her”.

References and citations

  • Website URLs no longer need to be preceded with “Retrieved from” unless there is also a retrieval date.
  • EBooks no longer require the type of eBook to be listed (e.g. PDF, Kindle etc)
  • Journal DOIs are now displayed as a doi.org URL instead of with the “DOI:” prefix.
  • The publisher location is no longer required for books or similar mediums.
  • Up to 20 authors can now be included in a reference list entry before needing to omit others with an ellipsis.
  • With in-text citations, any reference with more than three authors can now be shortened to the first author and et al.

Punctuation and layout

  • Titles are no longer needed in the header. This include the Running Head on the title page. Page numbers are still needed in the upper right corner of every page. 
  • Headings are simplified. See this page of the APA website for details: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings
  • The 7th edition adds additional fonts: Calibri size 11pt, Arial 11pt, Lucida Sans Unicode 10pt, and Georgia 11pt in addition to Times New Roman 12pt.
  • Use one space after a period.