APA 7th edition in two minutes
APA 7th edition runs on one simple idea: the author-date system. Every time you use someone else's idea, you drop a short in-text citation — (Smith, 2023) — and your reader finds the full details in an alphabetized reference list at the end. Two parts, always paired; an in-text citation without a matching reference (or vice versa) is the most basic error you can make.
If you learned APA 6th, three things changed. First, in-text citations now use et al. for three or more authors right from the first mention. Second, the publisher's city and state are gone from book references. Third, 'Retrieved from' before URLs is dead — a bare, clickable URL or DOI is all you need. Everything else you remember still applies.
How to cite a website in APA
Websites are the most-cited and most-misformatted source students use. The reference format is: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL. A real example: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024, February 12). About COVID-19. https://www.cdc.gov/covid/about/... Note the sentence case — only the first word of the title and subtitle, plus proper nouns, are capitalized.
In text, that's (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024) for the first mention; many writers shorten subsequent mentions to (CDC, 2024) after defining the abbreviation. If the page has no individual author, the organization itself is the author. If there's genuinely no author at all, the title moves into the author position.
- Format: Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL
- Use sentence case for titles — not Title Case.
- Drop 'Retrieved from' — APA 7th wants the bare URL only.
How to cite a book in APA
Books are mercifully simple. The pattern is: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work: Capitalize subtitle too. Publisher. Example: Ahmed, R. (2022). Research methods for the real world. Oxford University Press. The book title is italicized; the publisher name is not. No city, no state — APA 7th removed the location entirely.
For edited books, credit the editors with (Ed.) or (Eds.) after their names. For a chapter in an edited book, cite the chapter author and add 'In E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. 45–67). Publisher.' Ebooks follow the same pattern as print, with a DOI or URL appended if one exists — never add 'ebook' or device details.
How to cite a journal article in APA
Journal articles look intimidating but follow a fixed skeleton: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume(issue), page range. https://doi.org/xxxx. Example: Sharma, P., & Iqbal, N. (2023). Sleep quality and exam performance. Journal of Student Research, 12(3), 210–228. https://doi.org/10.0000/example
Two details trip people up. The journal title and volume number are italicized; the issue number and pages are not. And the DOI — formatted as a full https URL — is now the standard ending whenever one exists; only fall back to the journal homepage URL when there's no DOI at all. Never end an article reference with a database name like JSTOR or EBSCO.
- Italicize the journal title and volume number — not the issue or pages.
- End with the DOI as a full https://doi.org link when available.
- Never include database names (JSTOR, ProQuest) in the reference.
Tricky cases: no author, no date, 3+ authors
Missing information has standard fixes — don't improvise. No author? Move the title into the author position and alphabetize your reference list by the first significant word: (Understanding sleep, 2021). No date? Use n.d. — (Khan, n.d.) — in both the in-text citation and the reference. No author and no date? Combine them: (Title, n.d.).
Three or more authors? Use et al. from the first in-text citation: (Garcia et al., 2024). In the reference list, write out up to 20 authors before resorting to an ellipsis. Corporate authors (World Bank, UNESCO) are cited by their full name, and personal communications — emails, interviews, private messages — are cited in text only, never in the reference list, since readers can't retrieve them.
5 mistakes that cost students marks
First, the hanging indent — every reference after the first line indents half an inch, and a startling number of students skip it. In Word: select your list, right-click > Paragraph > Special > Hanging. In Google Docs: Format > Align & indent > Indentation options > Hanging. Second, italics in the wrong place: book and journal titles get italics, article and chapter titles don't.
Third, et al. in the reference list — it belongs in in-text citations, never in references (list up to 20 authors instead). Fourth, the reference list must be strictly alphabetical, letter by letter, ignoring 'A', 'An', and 'The' at the start of titles. Fifth, dead or missing DOIs — always verify the link resolves. All Done's free APA citation generator formats all of this correctly in seconds, but run the result past this checklist before submitting — thirty seconds of verification is what separates a generator user from a generator victim.
- Apply a hanging indent to every reference (Word: Paragraph > Special > Hanging).
- Italics for books and journals — never for article or chapter titles.
- Keep et al. in in-text citations; spell out authors (up to 20) in references.
- Alphabetize strictly, and verify every DOI link actually resolves.
