APA 7 Citations

The APA style guide is a citation system created by the American Psychological Association and used primarily in the social sciences. Using APA allows you to join a community of practice. Citing sources according to APA puts your research in conversation with other works in your field. In this way, your research can contribute to the broader base of knowledge.

Every complete APA entry consists of two parts:

• In-text citation: a parenthetical citation integrated into the sentence or paragraph when quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Note: When paraphrasing and summarizing, a page number is not required. When quoting, however, a page number is required.
• Reference entry: a complete bibliographic citation listed alphabetically at the end of the paper in the reference list. Note: Do not include a source in your reference list if you do not cite that source in the body of your paper.

In-text Citations

Basic Parenthetical Citation: (name, publication date, page)

“Thinking is a mental activity that is used to resolve doubt about what to do, what to believe, or what to desire or seek” (Baron, 1993, p. 193).

or

According to Baron (1993), “Thinking is a mental activity that is used to resolve doubt about what to do, what to believe, or what to desire or seek” (p. 193).

Directly quoting with no page numbers (paragraph #)

According to Baron (1993), “Thinking is a mental activity that is used to resolve doubt about what to do, what to believe, or what to desire or seek” (para. 4).

With two authors

Participants in the study spent more time analyzing arguments that they disagreed with compared to those that they agreed with (Edwards & Smith, 1996).

With three or more authors

Only the first author is included with the “et al.” notation.

Although human thinking is not always rational, it can be improved through training (Lilienfeld et al., 2009).

When making a claim that multiple sources support

List the sources in alphabetical order.

Numerous researchers have inquired into the different dispositions of critical thinking (Ennis, 1996; Facione et al., 1994; Perkins et al., 1993).

Block Quotes

Quotations that are more than forty words long still include author name, date, and page, but the formatting is slightly different:

• There are no quotation marks around the quotation.
• The period comes before the parenthetical citation.
• The entire quotation is indented ½ inch from the left margin.

Example: 

According to Biesta (2006):

There is, however, another way to understand learning, one that does not think of learning as the acquisition of something that already exists, but instead sees learning as responding, as a response to a ‘question’.[…] Here learning becomes a creation or an invention, a process of bringing something new into the world: one’s own, unique response. (p. 68)

Reference Entries

Style

APA 7 has made several important changes from APA 6 with respect to style. These include the following:

• The pronoun “they” is used for persons who use it as their pronoun. It should also be used as a generic pronoun instead of “he or she”.
• The Oxford comma, which is the comma before the last item in a list, is required.
• One space is used after a period at the end of a sentence.
• Running heads are no longer required for student papers (unless the professor requests it).
• Double quotation marks are used instead of italics to emphasize text.

For more information, you can consult the Online Writing Lab at Purdue and the APA website.

Writing Services, Wilfrid Laurier University, CC By-NC 2023