APA Referencing

APA referencing is based on an author-date system. Sources are listed by the author's surname (family name) and by the year the source was published.

Citation format changes according to the number of authors there are for a source and for the type of source referenced. For example, a journal article citation is formatted differently than a book citation. This difference is obvious only on the "References" page.  Citations in the body of your paper use only author and date.  This guide provides information for citation format in papers and on the references page.  

The following are examples of different citation formats for a source by one author.  

In the Body of Your Paper

Narrative citation (beginning of sentence):  Bunker (2014) cautions that not all monitors provide accurate measurements of BP.

Parenthetical citation (end of sentence): Some monitors provide more accurate measurements of BP than others (Bunker, 2014).

On the References Page

Bunker, J. (2014). Hypertension: Diagnosis, assessment and management. Nursing Standard, 28(42). 50-59. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.28.42.50.e8682

Videos

Watch this 4-minute introduction to APA 7th edition in-text citations.

Scribbr. (2020, November 3). APA 7th edition: The basics of APA in-text citations [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opp259YvaoE

Watch this 7-minute extended lesson on APA 7th edition in-text citations.

OWLPurdue.(2020, November 11). APA 7th edition: In-Text citations [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yi6GXPhybs&t=4s 

More videos on in-text citations and creating a references list (click here).