APA 7th Edition Citations

Getting used to APA formatting can be a challenge, but it’s easy to understand the basics.  When citing sources in an APA style paper, there are two types of in-text citations that can be used within the body of an APA paper to help the reader locate the corresponding reference in the reference list. The two types of in-text citations are parenthetical citations and narrative citations. A parenthetical citation is a type of citation where the author and date are listed at the end of the sentence in parentheses; whereas, the narrative citation identifies the author’s name as part of the sentence with the date immediately following the author’s name in parentheses.

There are a number of ways that parenthetical and narrative citations can be added to the body of the paper to aid in the readability of the paper. The following table provides a few examples of how this may be done based on the type of author.

Note. Adapted from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, by the American Psychological Association, 2020, Table 8.1, p. 266 (https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000). Copyright 2020 by the American Psychological Association.

*Define the abbreviation for a group author only once in the text, choosing either the parenthetical or narrative citation. Once introduced, use only the abbreviation for all mentions of the group author in the text of your paper.

Use precise language and avoid the repetition of telling the reader the same thing in several ways.

So, instead of writing: Some researchers did a study where they looked at some stuff…

Write: Punjabi and Taylor (2020) found a relationship between…

Instead of writing: A study by Hu and Nugyen (2007) found...

Write: Hu and Nugyen (2007) found...

Reference pages are for Presentations only, you won’t have a reference page for papers, you will only cite the assigned article.

Also, be sure your reference list makes sense… 

We generally don’t use first names in APA, we use gender-neutral last names.

Link to common mistakes in APA to help you clean up your writing.