Skip to Main Content

Citation Resources

Your one stop shop for citation information!

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

APA style was created by the American Psychological Association for use by professionals and students preparing papers in psychology, nursing, social work, communications, education, business, and engineering among others.

Why use APA style? So that those in the discipline listed above have consistency in their exploration of information in their fields of study being able to scan quickly for key points and sources. Understanding APA Style will also help students further explore information and resources in their research.

Papers written in APA style should be double spaced.  The page with the citations should start a new page and be labeled "References", any citations longer than one line should be double spaced, and for any citations longer than one line, use hanging indents on the second and all subsequent lines of the citation. If appendices are includes they will follow the References pages.

Also see APA Inclusive Language Guidelines.

The citations in this guide are general citations from the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association shown below.  For more information and more details on the formatting, writing, and citing of papers see the links below. And remember you can always ask a librarian!

Basic book citation example:

       Burgess, R. (2019). Rethinking global health: Frameworks of power. Routledge.

This example shows first author name, last name followed by first initial, in parenthesis the year of publication, title in italics ending with publisher name. 

(Citation found on page 321 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)

In-text citations:
  • Parenthetical citation: (Burgess, 2019)
  • Narrative citation: Burgess (2019)
For further examples of different types of textual works see the resources below.

 

Basic article citation example:

      Anderson, M. (2018). Getting consistent with consequences. Educational Leadership, 76(1), 26-33.

This example shows first the author, last name followed by the first initial, then the year of publication in parenthesis, followed by article title, then the journal title in italics next is volume number in italics followed by issue number in parenthesis, and last is the page rage of the article. 

(Citation found on page 317 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)

In-text citations:
  • Parenthetical citation: (Anderson, 2018)
  • Narrative citation: Anderson (2018)
For further examples and examples of different types of articles follow the links below.

Basic webpage on a website citation example:

Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, January 23). People at high risk of developing flu-related complications. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/high_risk.htm 

This example starts with the author in this case the group that authored the piece the Center for Disease Control. Nest in parenthesis is the date the webpage was published, followed by the title in italics.  Last comes the webpage URL. (Please note that as this citation is longer than one line the second line should have a hanging indent)

(Citation found on page 351 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)

In-text citations:
  • Parenthetical citation: (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018)
  • Narrative citation: Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2018)
For other types of electronic and webpage, citations see the links and resources below.

 

For all other types of sources including reports and gray literature, Conference presentations and proceedings, dissertations and theses, and more, including intext citations see the resources and links below.

For legal citations guidance beyond the APA Publication Manual visit the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School at https://www.law.cornell.edu/ and https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/