Citation Style Guides and Management Tools

The American Psychological Association Style was first developed in 1929 by a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers to make scientific writing more consistent and easier to read. Since that time, it has become one of the most popular writing styles and can be used in any field, but is most commonly used in the social sciences, business, and nursing disciplines.

The most recent version of the style guide is the 7th edition, first published in 2019. See the Further Resources section below for physical copies and more resources.

Citations allow readers (including your professor) to understand and verify your information and where it came from. It gives credit to those whose information you are building upon and allows readers to easily learn more about a topic by finding your source.

• Whenever you are using an existing idea, statement, figure, or set of data, whether as a direct quotation or paraphrased, you should cite your source.
• In APA, everything should be cited in the body of your work using a brief in-text citation which corresponds to a complete citation in a reference list at the end of your work. Below are examples of how to create both in-text and reference list citations for common sources in APA.
• If you're feeling stuck, you can refer to the Further Resources section below for more comprehensive guides or look at your contact options in the Ask Us! We're Here to Help section; don't worry, citations can be tricky and we're here to help!

Unlike reference list citations, APA in-text citations are not strictly formatted based on the type of source; instead, every in-text citation follows the author-date approach and can be implemented in multiple ways (we'll give some examples below).

• When citing broad concepts or entire works, you must simply provide the last name of the author and the year of the work's publication.
• When citing specific information or using direct quotes, you must additionally provide page numbers or other identifying information (use "p." for a single page and "pp." for multiple pages).
• When in doubt, it's always better to provide page numbers than to omit them.

This flexibility only works because you must provide a properly-formatted reference list which corresponds to every in-text citation. Sorry, you can't get off the hook that easy - but don't worry, we'll go through your reference list too!

Parenthetical Citations

In APA, in-text citations can be parenthetical, meaning they appear in parentheses in the middle or at the end of a sentence, like this:

... "the 'placebo effect', which had been verified in previous studies, disappeared when [only the first group's] behaviors were studied in this manner" (Miele, 1993, p. 276).

Narrative Citations

You can also use narrative citations in APA, which insert the needed information naturally in a sentence, like this:

Miele (1993) found that "the 'placebo effect', which had been verified in previous studies, disappeared when [only the first group's] behaviors were studied in this manner" (p. 276).

Sources Without Page Numbers

If the source you're citing doesn't have page numbers, like an article or webpage, use whatever other information you can find to identify the particular location of a piece of information. This can include paragraph numbers, section headings, table numbers, etc.; use whatever makes the most sense! Here are some examples:

Basu and Jones (2007) went so far as to suggest the need for a new "intellectual framework in which to consider the nature and form of regulation in cyberspace" (para. 4).

"Empirical studies have found mixed results on the efficacy of labels in educating consumers and changing consumption behavior" (Golan, Kuchler, & Krissof, 2007, "Mandatory Labeling has Targeted", para. 4).

For traditional knowledge or oral traditions that are not in a fixed format, use a modified form of the personal communication citation. While the official APA style guide does not deem it necessary to include a reference entry for these kinds of citations only, to ensure that this information is not devalued or lost we have provided a reference format you can use in the next section. Here's an example of an in-text citation:

Following a series of conversations with Joseph Turnipseed (Tulalip Nation, lives in Portland, Oregon, personal communication, September 2017), we discovered connections between…

The APA style guide also does not have official guidance on citing generative AI; however, their blog suggests that you cite the creator of the program as the author and include the year the text or information was generated. Because your results may not be reproducible by another user of the AI, you may want to include a copy of the full AI generation as an appendix in your document.

Here are some of the most common source types and their basic citation styles in APA reference lists; we provide the generic format followed by an example.

• You may not be able to find every piece of information listed in the generic format, or a particular source might not have them (for example, some books have authors and editors, while some only have one or the other); simply provide as much information as you can.
• APA reference lists should be sorted in alphabetical order by the first author's last name; items from the same author should be ordered chronologically.
• More examples can be found at the links in the Further Resources section below.

Books

If a book has an editor but no separate author, put their name at the beginning where the author's name would be followed by "(Ed.)".

Examples:

Kimmerer, R. W., Smith, M. G., & Neidhardt, N. (2022). Braiding sweetgrass for young adults. Lerner Publications.

Snell, D. C. (Ed.). (2020). A companion to the ancient near east (Second edition.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Journal and News Articles

If you don't have a DOI number, but the article has a stable URL, use that instead. When citing news articles, include the month and date after the year in lieu of volume, issue, or page numbers.

Examples:

Herbst-Damm, K.L. & Kulik, J.A. (2005). Volunteer support, marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology, 24(2), 225-229. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.24.2.225

Overbye, D. (2024, April 4). A tantalizing 'hint' that astronomers got dark energy all wrong. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/science/space/astronomy-universe-dark-energy.html

Dissertations and Theses

If the dissertation or thesis doesn't have a DOI but is kept in an online repository like ScholarWorks with a stable URL that is publicly viewable, you can include that URL at the end in lieu of a DOI. If it is unpublished, include the phrase "Unpublished" at the beginning of the square brackets and list the name of the institution outside of the brackets where the database or repository name would go.

Examples:

Coombs, N. C. (2022). An investigation of rural and mental health disparities across five dimensions of healthcare access [Doctoral dissertation, University of Montana]. ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11859

Shmoe, J. (2024). Citation guides and you: a comprehensive study [Unpublished Master's thesis]. University of Montana.

Film

Example:

Del Toro, G. (Director). (2006). El laberinto del fauno [Pan’s labyrinth] [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

Oral Traditions and Indigenous Elders

While the APA Manual does not require reference list citations for orally transmitted information, Lorisia MacLeod (2021) advocates for including the knowledge of indigenous elders and knowledge keepers in your reference list using the following APA template:

Example:

Cardinal, D. Goodfish Lake Cree Nation. Treaty 6. Lives in Edmonton. Oral teaching. personal communication. April 4, 2004.

Generative AI

The APA style guide also does not have official guidance on citing generative AI; however, their blog suggests the following reference format:

Example:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat.