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APA Citation Guide (7th Edition)

The APA 7th edition was published in October 2019. Please check with your instructor about which edition should be used for your work.

The American Psychological Association (APA) released the newest version of their publication manual, 7th edition in October 2019. Essentially not much has changed to the way citations are formatted in APA 7th, so if you are comfortable with writing citations according to the 6th edition rules then it should be a smooth transition into the 7th edition.

Here are the main changes you need to know about:

Books: The publisher location is no longer required for books or similar mediums.

Ebooks no longer require the type of ebook to be listed (e.g. Kindle etc.) instead the publisher name is included.

Websites: It is not necessary to include the words "Retrieved from" before a URL.

DOIs: DOI’s for journals and eBooks are now displayed as a doi.org URL (https://doi.org/10.xxxxx) instead of with the “doi:” prefix.

Authors: Up to 20 authors are now included in a reference list entry before needing to omit others with an ellipsis (…).

In-text citations: Any reference with more than three authors are now shortened to the first author and et al.

Audio-visual materials: There are some changes and additions for contributors to reflect new formats e.g., podcasts hosts; YouTube hosts; webinars and online streaming videos.

What's New in the 7th Edition

  • APA now has different title page requirements for student papers. This title page does not require a running head and has a different set of information to include. See APA Style: Student Title Page Guide.
  • In professional papers, the words "Running head:" no longer appear on the title page. Only the shortened title and page number should be used.
  • Titles of papers are now bolded, with a blank line before the author's name.
  • There is no font requirement as long as the font is legible and consistent. Authors may now use additional fonts (Calibri 11, Arial 11, Lucinda Sans Unicode 10, Times New Roman 12, and Georgia 11).
  • The heading for the References list is now bolded.
  • There are now guidelines for annotated bibliographies.
  • APA now uses more inclusive language, notably the use of the singular "they."

APA has simplified in-text citations in regards to multiple authors. If there is one or two authors, list their names:

(Hunt, 2020); (Hunt & Smith, 2020)

For three or more authors, list only the first author's name and then et al.

(Hunt et al., 2020)

  • Don't state "retrieved from" in the reference list.

  • Websites should now be italicized.

  • Publisher location is no longer needed in the reference entry.

  • DOIs should be listed as a URL.

  • Up to 20 authors for each source should be listed in the reference list. Formerly, APA only required that one list the first 7 authors for a given source.

In the opposite direction, APA now requires listing up to 20 authors for a source in the references list. This is a change from the the 6th edition. For works with more than 20 authors, list the first 19, insert an ellipsis point, and then list the last author's name.

Smith, J., Jones, B.E., Brown, K.E., Doe, J., Chan, L., Garcia, S.M., White, C-G., Fernandez, J., Ahmed, A.J., Zhao, L.,

Cohen D., Watanabe, K., Kim, K., Del Rosario, J., Yilmaz, P.K., Nguyen, T., Wilson, T.H., Wang, W., Kahale, A. . . .

Zhange, Z.Z. (Date). Title. Source.