What Is APA Style? Complete Guide to APA 7th Edition

Confused about citation format right before submitting your paper? You are not alone. Working out whether the period goes before or after a parenthetical citation, how to format a DOI, or whether a reference list and a bibliography are the same thing can eat the last hours before a deadline. Getting it wrong can cost marks or bring a manuscript back for formatting, and a source without proper credit can read as plagiarism.

This guide goes from your first in-text citation to a complete paper with a title page, abstract and reference page, and it shows what changed between the 6th and 7th editions.

Quick answer: APA Style is the formatting and citation system published by the American Psychological Association in its Publication Manual, now in the 7th edition. It sets rules for paper layout, in-text citations in (Author, Year) form and a reference list. Psychology, education, nursing and other social sciences use it most, and MS International requires APA format for submitted papers.

Last verified against official sources: October 2026.

What Is APA Style and Why Is It Important in Academic Writing?

APA Style is a set of rules for writing and formatting academic documents, created by the American Psychological Association. It began in 1929 as a short journal article with editorial guidelines and has grown into the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The 7th edition appeared in October 2019 and carries a 2020 copyright date, so you will see both years quoted. It covers everything from punctuation to how you cite a social media post.

The system rests on two parts: in-text citations inside the paper and a reference list at the end with full source details, including the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for digital sources where one exists. The short version is that APA tells you how to present information so readers can trust it, trace it and judge it themselves.

APA 7th Edition is the current standard. It replaced the 6th edition, and the differences matter, because references or layout built from the old rules will cost marks in most institutions today.

Who Actually Uses APA?

Primarily researchers and students in psychology, education, nursing, sociology and the wider social sciences. It is not universal: historians usually use Chicago and literary scholars use MLA. If your field deals with human behavior, health or social research, you are almost certainly writing in APA. Business schools, communication departments and criminology programs have adopted it too, so the reach is wider than the name suggests.

What the Style Actually Covers

People often think APA is only about citations. It also governs:

• Document structure: the title page, abstract, body and reference page each follow specific formatting rules
• In-text citation: every source you mention in the body needs a matching parenthetical reference
• Reference list: full source details at the end, formatted by source type
• Language and tone: guidelines on bias-free language (including the singular “they”), verb tense and how to write numbers

Why It Matters Beyond Formatting

The practical reason is plagiarism prevention. When every source is cited with a DOI, URL or enough publication detail to find it, you give credit where it is due and make your work verifiable.

The second reason is consistency. A reader who picks up a psychology paper from Brazil and another from Canada, both in APA, can find the same parts in the same places without relearning the structure. That makes the evidence easier to trace and judge, while writing without consistent citation is harder to evaluate.

Core Elements of APA Citation

Every citation has two parts that work as a team: a brief pointer in your text and a full entry at the end. Get both right and the paper holds together. Miss one and the system breaks down.

In-Text Citation

An in-text citation is the short pointer you place right after a quote, a paraphrase or any borrowed idea. It tells the reader who said it and when. The basic 7th edition format is (Author, Year).

For a direct quote, add a page number: (Smith, 2021, p. 45). For a paraphrase the page number is optional, but it helps when it lets the reader find the passage quickly.

Situations that trip people up:

• Two authors: list both every time, as in (Garcia & Lee, 2020)
• Three or more authors: use the first author followed by et al. from the very first citation, as in (Patel et al., 2019). If two sources would shorten to the same form, write out enough names to tell them apart
• No author: use a shortened title in quotation marks, as in (“Writing Well,” 2022)
• No date: use n.d. in place of the year, as in (Johnson, n.d.)
• Email, interview or other personal communication: cite it in the text only, with the initials, surname and the most exact date you have, as in (R. Silva, personal communication, March 3, 2025). It gets no reference entry because readers cannot retrieve it

The in-text citation must match an entry in your reference list, with the same author spelling and the same year. A citation with no matching entry leaves the reader unable to trace the source.

Reference List

The reference list is the full record of every source you actually cited. It sits on its own page at the end, titled References: centered and bold, with no italics and no quotation marks. Every entry follows the same core pattern:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher. DOI or URL

The specifics shift by source type, and the next section shows each one. For the DOI, always include it when it exists. If there is none, use a URL. If neither exists, as with a print-only book, end the entry after the publisher.

Formatting rules for the list:

• Entries are in alphabetical order by the first author’s last name
• List up to 20 authors; for more than 20, give the first 19, an ellipsis (no ampersand) and the final author
• Use a hanging indent: first line flush left, later lines indented 0.5 inches
• Double-space everything, with no extra space between entries
• Start the list on a new page, separate from the body
• Every in-text citation needs an entry here (personal communications are the exception), and every entry here must be cited somewhere in the text

Bibliography vs. Reference List: What Is the Difference?

People use these words interchangeably, but in APA they mean different things.

A reference list includes only the sources you cited, so in-text citations and entries match one to one. A bibliography includes everything you consulted, including background reading you never cited. APA’s own style site says APA Style generally calls for a reference list rather than a bibliography, and that the page label should be “References”, not “Bibliography” or “Works Cited”. APA treats a bibliography as a list of background or further reading. An annotated bibliography, which adds a short note to each source, is one kind of bibliography and has its own format in the Publication Manual. If an assignment asks for either one, follow the instructor’s wording, because the terms are used loosely.

Rules for Creating Citations in APA 7th Edition

If you have cited sources for years, a few things will look different now. If you are starting fresh, you are in a better position, because you are learning the current rules and not the old ones. The examples below use invented authors and titles to show the pattern, so do not search for them.

Journal Article Citation

This is the standard pattern for a journal article. The format is:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), Page–Page. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Only the first word of the article title is capitalized, plus proper nouns and the first word after a colon. The journal name stays in title case. These two rules are easy to swap. The volume number is italic and the issue number is not, so it is 12(3). Page ranges use an en dash (–), not a hyphen.

The DOI is your first choice for linking. If there is a DOI, use it and skip the URL, because DOIs are stable and URLs break. If there is no DOI and you read the article on an open website that is not a database, end the entry with the URL of the article itself. If there is no DOI and you found the article in an academic database such as PsycINFO or EBSCO, end the entry after the page range, with no database name and no URL, exactly as for a print article.

Garner, R. L., & Torres, M. (2021). Attention and retention in blended learning environments. Journal of Blended Learning Studies, 13(4), 189–202. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx

Book Citation (Including ISBN)

The format for a whole book:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book: Subtitle if any (Edition, if not first). Publisher.

APA does not use the ISBN in a reference entry, even though the ISBN uniquely identifies a book. The entry relies on author, year, title and publisher. Add an ISBN only if your instructor specifically asks for it. For a specific edition:

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.

For an edited book, the editors take the author position with “(Ed.)” or “(Eds.)” after the name:

Cooper, H. (Ed.). (2012). APA handbook of research methods in psychology. American Psychological Association.

A chapter in an edited book is cited under the chapter author. The editor’s name moves into the middle of the entry, after “In”:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. 25–51). Publisher.

Website and Online Source Citation (Including URL)

Websites are where citations get messy fast. The format:

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page or document. Site Name. URL

If there is no author, the site name moves into the author position. If there is no date, write (n.d.) where the year goes.

National Sleep Council. (2023, October 5). Sleep habits for students: Overview. https://www.example.org/sleep-habits

Do not write “Retrieved from” before a URL. That belonged to the 6th edition, and in the 7th you simply paste the URL. Leave the URL unfollowed by a period, because a final period can look like part of the address. For social media posts the pattern is similar: the first 20 words or so act as the title, in italics, and the platform name sits where the site name would.

Retrieval dates are needed only when the content is designed to change and no archived version exists, such as a live statistics page or a wiki. For most standard webpages you do not need one.

Academic Paper and Thesis Citation

Unpublished theses, published dissertations and papers from databases follow slightly different paths. The difference is whether the work is publicly accessible. If it sits in a university archive and was never formally published, label it unpublished and name the institution. If it is available through a database or repository, name the database and, for an open repository, end with the URL.

Lim, S. (2020). Cognitive load and multimedia instruction in secondary classrooms [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Toronto.

Hernandez, C. (2019). Social capital and immigrant integration in urban schools [Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

Conference papers in published proceedings are treated much like journal articles. If it was a presentation only, say so in brackets:

Kim, J., & Park, H. (2022, March 15–19). Teacher feedback and self-regulated learning in online courses [Paper presentation]. Example Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.

If you cannot identify a stable, findable source, cite the most direct version you actually used, not a secondary reference to it. Tracing sources back to their origin is part of plagiarism prevention. When you are unsure about a format, look the source type up in the Publication Manual before relying on a generator.

Paper Structure in APA Format

Structure matters as much as the citations. APA specifies not only what each part contains but where it goes and how it looks on the page.

Title Page

Every APA 7th Edition paper starts with a title page, and its content depends on whether you are writing a student paper or a professional paper for journal submission. A student paper needs:

• The full title (bold, centered, in the upper half of the page)
• Your name
• Your institution (the school or department)
• Course number and name
• Instructor’s name
• Assignment due date
• Page number in the top right header

Professional papers swap the course details for an author note and add a running head, a shortened title in capitals in the header of every page, no more than 50 characters. A student paper carries only the page number in its header, so students who copy the professional format add an unnecessary running head. Check which format your institution requires before you finalize anything.

The title should be specific and informative. Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Short-Term Memory in College Students works. “Memory Study” does not. Aim for a focused title, and keep it as short as it can be while still telling the reader what the paper is about.

Abstract

Not every paper needs an abstract. APA does not require one for student papers unless the instructor asks, and journals generally ask for one. When it is required, it goes on its own page directly after the title page, under a bold, centered “Abstract” heading.

The abstract is a single paragraph with no first-line indent. APA’s own guide says to keep it to 250 words or fewer, and journals often set a tighter limit, so check the author guidelines. It should cover the research problem, the methods, the key findings and the conclusion. Avoid direct quotes, and citations are normally left out too. Write it last, even though it appears first.

Below the abstract, add keywords on a new line. Indent it, type Keywords: in italics, and list three to five terms in lowercase (except proper nouns) separated by commas. Keywords are used for indexing in databases and as search terms, so choose descriptive ones. APA’s abstract guide suggests terms that cover the research topic, the population, the method and the application of the findings.

Body and Headings

APA uses a five-level heading system. Most undergraduate papers use only two or three levels.

You use your real section titles. The word “Introduction” is not used as a heading, because APA treats the first section as the introduction by default.

Paragraphs are indented half an inch and the body is double-spaced throughout, with no extra space between paragraphs. Use one readable font for the whole paper. APA’s font page lists serif options such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia and 10-point Computer Modern, and sans serif options such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial and 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode. Other legible, widely available fonts are allowed. Conference proceedings often fix the font in a template, so check the conference paper format before you start. Every fact, quote or idea from another source needs an in-text citation.

Reference Page

The reference page is its own page at the end of the paper, headed References in bold and centered. It never carries the title “Bibliography” or “Works Cited”, which belong to other styles. The layout rules (alphabetical order, hanging indent, double spacing) are listed under Core Elements above.

A journal reference needs the author(s), year, article title, journal name in italics, volume in italics, issue in parentheses, page range and the DOI if one exists. The DOI looks like a URL and makes the source permanently traceable. For a website, include the full URL, and add the access date only if the page is designed to change. Thesis entries follow the same pattern with the institution and, where it applies, the database such as ProQuest.

From our experience at MS International: authors submitting to our conferences are asked to follow APA format and the official paper template, and our editorial team checks formatting and completeness at initial screening before the paper goes to reviewers. Review is double-blind, so follow the conference instructions on removing identifying details from the manuscript. Full papers should normally run four to twelve pages including references, so check the template’s page limit before you add extra references or appendices. Where the template and a general APA rule differ, follow the template.

Common APA Formatting Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Even experienced researchers slip on APA, because the rules are detailed and the 7th edition changed enough that old habits resurface. These are the errors not already covered in the sections above.

Hanging Indents Done Wrong

A hanging indent is easy to get wrong on a reference page. People indent the first line like a paragraph, which is backwards, or they use the space bar instead of the indent function.

In Microsoft Word, select the reference list, open Paragraph settings and, under “Special”, choose “Hanging” with a value of 0.5″. Do not fake it with spaces. It looks fine on your screen and breaks when someone opens the file on another machine.

In-Text Citation Errors

The author-date format sounds simple until you reach the edge cases.

Multiple authors. For three or more authors, APA 7 uses “et al.” from the first citation, so it is (Jones et al., 2021), not (Jones, Smith, & Brown, 2021). Many older guides still show the old way.

Same author, same year. For two papers by one author in the same year, add lowercase letters: (Martinez, 2022a) and (Martinez, 2022b). The same letters go on the matching reference entries.

Quotations. A direct quote needs a page or paragraph number. (Thompson, 2020) is not enough; write (Thompson, 2020, p. 47), or (Thompson, 2020, para. 3) for an online source without page numbers. Without it the reader cannot locate the exact passage.

Incorrect DOI and URL Formatting

Since the 7th edition, DOIs are shown as links in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx, with no “DOI:” label and no period after the link. The old “doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx” form is now wrong. For URLs without a DOI, give the full URL and no “Retrieved from”. If a journal article has both a DOI and a URL, use only the DOI.

APA Citation Generator: How to Use It

An APA citation generator builds citations from the source details you enter. It saves time, but it can also get details wrong, so treat it as a starting point and not a final answer.

Which Generators Actually Work

Commonly used options include:

• Zotero: free and open-source, available as a browser extension and desktop app, and able to pull metadata directly from a webpage or journal article.
• Citation Machine, MyBib and Cite This For Me: browser-based tools that need no download. Check anything with several authors or a corporate author.
• Word and Google Docs: both have built-in citation tools, which are fine for quick drafts.

Many university libraries also provide citation tools through their own databases, so check there first.

How to Use a Generator Without Getting Burned

Step 1: Identify your source type first. Journal article, book, webpage and thesis each have a different format, and choosing the wrong type gives a wrong layout from the start.

Step 2: Enter the DOI or URL when available. A DOI is more stable than a URL, and most generators fill the fields in automatically from it.

Step 3: Fill in missing fields manually. Auto-population is unreliable. Check the author names, year, article title, journal, volume, issue and pages.

Step 4: Copy the output and then verify it. Compare the structure line by line with the Publication Manual or the official APA Style website (apastyle.apa.org) before it goes on your reference page.

What Generators Can Get Wrong

• DOI problems. Some skip the DOI or put an ISBN where it does not belong. A journal DOI should end the entry in the form https://doi.org/xxxxx.
• Capitalization. Article titles should be in sentence case, but generators often return title case because that is how the source displays it.
• Thesis details. The database name may be omitted or the institution formatted incorrectly.
• et al. thresholds. Some tools still apply an older author-count rule instead of the 7th edition rule of “et al.” from the first citation for three or more authors.

Generators and Plagiarism Prevention

A generator does not protect you from plagiarism. A perfectly formatted reference means nothing if you paraphrased someone’s work without citing it, or cited the wrong source. The tool handles mechanical formatting. Deciding what needs a citation, matching citations to the text and keeping the reference list to sources you really used is still your job. Every paraphrase needs a citation, not only direct quotes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

APA 7th Edition trips people up on details like DOIs, sources with no author, the Title Page, ISBNs and how a Bibliography relates to a Reference Page.

What’s the difference between APA 6th and 7th Edition?

The 7th edition lists up to 20 authors in a reference entry (the 6th listed up to 7) and uses “et al.” from the first citation for three or more authors. It drops the student running head and writes DOIs as links. It is the current edition.

Do I need a DOI for every source?

No. Include a DOI whenever the source has one, but many sources do not, such as books, websites and older print articles. Use a URL if the source is online, or end the entry after the publisher if it is print-only.

Is a Bibliography the same as a Reference Page in APA?

No. APA uses a reference list, headed “References”, that holds only the sources you cited in the text. A bibliography is background or further reading, so use one only if an instructor asks. An annotated bibliography has its own APA format.

How do I cite a source with no author?

Move the title into the author position and alphabetize the entry by it. In the text, cite a shortened title and the year: italic for a standalone work such as a report, quotation marks for an article or webpage title.

Can I use an APA Citation Generator for academic submissions?

Yes, but verify every entry it produces. Generators get punctuation, DOIs and author names wrong. Treat the output as a first draft and check it against the Publication Manual or your institution’s APA guide before submitting.

How do I format a Title Page in APA 7th Edition?

A student title page has a bold, centered title, your name, institution, course number and name, instructor and due date, with the page number in the header. Professional papers add a running head and an author note. Double-space the page and use the same font as the rest of the paper.

Does APA require an Abstract?

Not for student papers unless the instructor asks. Journal submissions generally need one, set at 250 words or fewer, with no first-line indent. Check the assignment or journal instructions first.

How do I cite a thesis or dissertation in APA?

The pattern depends on where you found it. A thesis in a database is cited as: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of thesis [Doctoral dissertation, University Name]. Database Name. An unpublished one replaces the database with “[Unpublished doctoral dissertation]” and the institution name.

What’s the correct way to handle an ISBN in APA citations?

Leave it out. APA 7th Edition does not use the ISBN in the reference list, whatever the book. Use the DOI for digital books when one exists, or the publisher for print books.

How does APA help prevent plagiarism?

Consistent in-text citations and a complete reference list show which ideas came from outside sources and which are your own. Every paraphrase needs a citation, not just direct quotes.

My professor asked for “APA format” but didn’t specify the edition. Which one do I use?

Use the 7th edition. It has been the current edition since its release in 2019, so it is the default unless your institution says otherwise.

Conclusion: Next Steps to Mastering APA

APA is a skill you build over several papers, and knowing why the rules exist lets you reason through edge cases instead of panicking. Start with the four pillars (title page, abstract, in-text citations and reference page), then add the rarer source types as you meet them. If you learned APA from an older source, skim the 7th edition changes, because the rules for URLs became simpler and the inclusive-language guidance was updated. Keep the 7th edition Publication Manual or the free APA Style website (apastyle.apa.org) close, and note that students can also use the Concise Guide to APA Style, which APA adapts from the 7th edition manual, and use that before any random guide from a search engine. After your next paper, write down the three citation types you found most confusing, look them up properly and write each format out once by hand. The goal of APA is not perfection for its own sake but consistency, so a reader can move through your paper and your reference list without friction.