APA Citation Guide (7th edition)

This APA Research Guide is intended to help you format papers and cite sources in APA format.

Refer to the manual for specifics on writing, formatting, and citing sources. 

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association also referred to as the "APA Manual" is the official source for APA style. This style encompasses how to write concisely, how to format your paper, and how to format your citations/references. 

Currently in its 7th edition, the APA Manual is the source for writing papers in this style. You may want to purchase your own copy of the manual or you can come to the library to use our copy at the research help desk.

There are also additional websites to help you with APA formatting but don't rely solely on websites. Use authorized resources whenever possible including the APA Manual, APA Style website, or APA Style Blog.

These are popular websites about academic writing from other universities. 

A full summary of the changes can be found in What’s New in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition.

Here are a few of the major changes between the 6^th and 7^th editions (See book for more).

• New specific guidelines for student papers are different than the guidelines for professional papers.
• New guidelines for annotated bibliographies.
• Titles of papers are now bolded, with a blank line before the author's name.
• Use only one space after a period in the body of the paper.
• Use the singular "they" as a generic third-person pronoun rather than "he or she"
• There are changes in how to write in-text citations for works with more than three authors.
• The heading for the References list is now bolded.
• You now must include up to 20 authors for the items in the reference list.
• For journal articles, you always include the issue number.
• The way to write digital object identifiers (DOIs) and URLs has been standardized and the hyperlink should be left live.
• Instead of just Times New Roman, you can select from 6 different fonts. See each font type for size.
• You no longer include the location of the publisher for books.

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