APA Citation 7th Edition

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association serves as an essential resource for students and professionals alike in the field of behavioral and social sciences. The purpose of the manual is to assist in providing guidelines and examples of how to properly format research papers and cite sources in your academic and professional writings. 

This guide is currently based on the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the 7th edition. The purpose of this guide is to provide examples of how to properly construct your citations so they include all of the required elements for the material you are citing. For formatting, please review the APA Style website.

If you need more guidance on other principles of APA, please visit the APA Style website or view one of the physical copies of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association located at Omar Seddiqui Research Library. For any questions on how to use this guide or locating specific citation information, please contact the librarians through the Library Help page.

The following contains a summary of the major changes found in the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual. You can see the completed list of new and updated content from the introduction to the 7th edition of the APA Manual here.

     Writing style, grammar, and bias-free language

• Use of the singular "they" is endorsed and needed for two specific situations: in which the known person uses singular "they" as their pronoun, and when referring to a person whose gender is unknown.
• Chart was created for recommended verb tenses in APA Style papers.
• Guidelines were updated to support inclusive language for gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and racial and ethnic identity. Three new areas were added: socioeconomic status, intersectionality, and participation in research.       

       Format and paper elements

• Updated table of contents for students and professionals.
• A new student title page has been added, with call-outs including course name, number, instructor, and due date. No running headers are required for student papers.
• Updated byline and affiliation format for professionals to make it more cohesive for publishers.
• Author notes have been updated and simplified to include conflicts, disclosures, and other details that go into evaluating an article.
• Font recommendations have been revised to be more inclusive of those who rely on assistive technology. Acceptable fonts include: 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode. The 12-point Times New Roman is still accepted, as well as the 11-point Georgia and the 10-point Computer Modern.

     In-text citations

• Citing a resource with three or more authors can now be abbreviated with et al.: (Martin et al., 2020)
• Table was developed to give examples of how to cite direct quotes in text.
• New guidance on how to properly cite oral traditions and traditional knowledge for Indigenous communities, which involves providing the person's full name and nation or Indigenous group they belong to, as well as providing their location and the phrase "personal communication," along with the date of said personal communication.

Citation: A citation is how you, the scholar, communicate to your readers about where you're pulling information from; it gives your audience the necessary details to locate the information from your References page. APA Style of citations follow the author-date citation format.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): The DOI refers to a string of unique symbols, letters, and numbers that are used to permanently identify an article or document online. This can be immensely useful to help track down hard-to-find resources in databases and websites. 

In-text Citation: This directs readers to the appropriate citation located on your References list. APA Style uses the author-date method of in-text citations, which includes the author's surname and date of publication. For example: (Smith, 2021).

Paraphrasing: This is a process that involves rewording another author's ideas--or even your own work--in your own words. This is an effective and useful way to summarize and synthesize complex ideas.

Plagiarism: The act of taking an author's ideas and representing them as your own work. To learn more about plagiarism and how to avoid it, please take a look at the handout on the APA Style's website.

Reference List: A list of every source you cited within your paper, all formatted per APA guidelines. These sources include quotes, paraphrases, summaries, or any piece of information you've incorporated from an outside source. 

Retrieval Date: This refers to the date you located an online resource. A retrieval date is needed for a reference list entry when you are citing a work that is likely to change over time with no archived version to refer back to.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has developed an inclusive language guide to reflect changes in the human landscape and raise awareness of terminology that can negatively impact marginalized communities. The contents of this guide will not be exhaustive as language is fluid. As students, writers, and researchers, it is imperative to adopt a style of writing that communicates respect and inclusivity when discussing the histories and voices of people who have been subjected to stigma, stereotypes, and marginalization. 

The APA also has a bias-free language guide that goes hand-in-hand with its inclusive language guide. 

Please reach out to the librarians should you have any questions about the above guides from the APA.