APA Citation Style Format

APA style puts the author's last name and the year in the text, then a full reference at the end. That's the whole system in one sentence. Everything else is formatting rules built around it.

This guide covers APA 7th edition, which the American Psychological Association published in October 2019 and is the current standard for psychology, education, nursing, and most social science courses.

The two pieces you always need

Every APA citation has two parts that have to match.

In-text: (Smith, 2020) or Smith (2020) found that...

Reference list entry: the full source at the end of your paper, alphabetized by author last name.

If a source shows up in your text, it shows up in your references. If it's in your references, it has to appear in the text. No exceptions.

In-text citation rules

• One author: (Smith, 2020)
• Two authors: (Smith & Jones, 2020) with an ampersand inside parentheses, but "Smith and Jones (2020)" in running text.
• Three or more authors: (Smith et al., 2020) from the first citation. APA 7 dropped the old rule about spelling out three authors the first time.
• Direct quote: add the page number. (Smith, 2020, p. 45).
• No author: use the first few words of the title in quotes for articles or italics for books. ("Climate Report," 2023).
• No date: use n.d. Example: (Smith, n.d.).

Reference list entry structure

The base pattern is: Author. (Year). Title. Source.

A journal article looks like this:

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191

Notice the details. Only the first word of the title and subtitle is capitalized (plus proper nouns). The journal name and volume number are italicized. The issue number sits in parentheses, not italic. The DOI is a working URL with no period after it.

A book:

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A website with an author:

Mayo Clinic. (2023, March 14). Sleep deprivation: Symptoms and causes. https://www.mayoclinic.org/...

Page formatting at a glance

These are the defaults for a student paper under APA 7.

• Font: any of these are fine. Times New Roman 12, Calibri 11, Arial 11, Georgia 11, or Lucida Sans Unicode 10.
• Margins: 1 inch on all sides.
• Line spacing: double-spaced everywhere, including the reference list.
• Paragraph indent: 0.5 inch on the first line of each paragraph.
• Page numbers: top right corner, starting on the title page.
• Title page: title in bold, centered, three or four lines down. Author name, school, course, instructor, and due date follow.
• Running head: not required for student papers in APA 7. It's only for professional manuscripts now.

The reference list itself starts on a new page. The word "References" is bold and centered at the top. Every entry uses a hanging indent: first line flush left, every line after that indented 0.5 inch.

A short worked example

You're paraphrasing a 2020 study by Lisa Chen about study habits.

In your paper:

Chen (2020) found that students who studied in 30-minute blocks retained 22% more material than those who studied for two hours straight.

In your reference list:

Chen, L. (2020). Time-blocked study sessions and recall in undergraduates. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(4), 678–691. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000400

Author and year line up. Page number isn't needed because you paraphrased instead of quoting directly.

Common mistakes that cost easy points

• Capitalizing every word of an article title. Don't. Sentence case only.
• Forgetting the hanging indent on references.
• Putting a period after the DOI or URL. Leave it off.
• Using "&" in running text. The ampersand only goes inside parentheses.
• Citing a source you didn't actually read. If you found a study quoted in another paper, cite it as "(Chen, 2020, as cited in Park, 2022)" and put Park in your references, not Chen.
• Mixing up et al. rules. APA 7 uses it from the first citation when there are three or more authors.

When to double-check the official manual

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed., 2020) is the source of truth for edge cases like legal references, government reports, social media posts, and translated works. APA Style's free site at apastyle.apa.org mirrors most of the manual's guidance and gets updated when rules change.

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