APA Citation Generator

APA style, the short version

APA style comes from the American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (7th edition, 2020). Psychology, education, nursing, business and most social sciences use it.

Author, then date

Start with the surname and initials, then the year in parentheses followed by a full stop: Nguyen, T. L. (2021). List up to 20 authors, with an ampersand before the last. For 21 or more, give the first 19, an ellipsis, then the final author.

Sentence case for titles

Capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns in the titles of articles, books and web pages. Journal names keep title case and go in italics with the volume number.

Italics carry meaning

Italicise the standalone work: the book, the report, the web page, the journal name and volume. The title of an article or chapter inside a larger work stays in plain type.

DOI as a link

Give DOIs as https://doi.org/10.xxxx. Don’t write “Retrieved from” or put a full stop after a URL or DOI. Only add a retrieval date for pages that are designed to change, such as a live dashboard.

No date, no author

Write (n.d.) for no date. With no author, move the title to the author position: Title of page. (2024).

In-text citations

Parenthetical: (Nguyen, 2021, p. 14). Narrative: Nguyen (2021). Two authors are always both named with “&” in parentheses and “and” in running text. Three or more become (Nguyen et al., 2021) from the first citation.