Citing sources: APA (American Psychological Association)

Multiple authors: In-text citations

• For APA 6 there were several rules about when and how to list multiple authors in an in-text citation. It’s easier now:
• 2 authors: List them both each time you cite that source;
• More than 2 authors: Every time you cite that source list the first author’s name, then use et al. to indicate there are others.
• Example:

the in-text citation:

Your TCC Librarians and the Director of the Writing and Tutoring Center encourage you (and your instructors) to use APA 6 through Winter 2020. If you already know APA 6, it would not hurt their feelings if you kept using it through Spring 2020 as well, especially if it means you will be devoting that energy to your researching and writing skills (Urschel et al., 2020).​

the References citation:

Urschel, H., Adams, M. K., Cmiel, S., Williams, R., Gillanders, H., & Snoek-Brown, J. (2020). Citing sources: APA (American Psychological Association). TCC Library Research Guides. http://tacomacc.libguides.com/TCCLibrary/research-guides

Multiple authors: References citations

• When a work has up to 20 authors, list them all in the References citation (yes, that’s a lot of authors).
• The good news is, you will rarely need to enact the following APA 7 rule:
  • More than 21 authors? List the first 19, follow with an ellipsis..., then list the last author as listed on the article. Example:

Wiskunde, B., Arslan, M., Fischer, P., Nowak, L., Van den Berg, O., Coetzee, L., Juárez, U., Riyaziyyat, E., Kimura, Y., Zhang, I., Chakraborty, P., Yang, M. L., Kumar, B., Xu, A., Martinez, R., McIntosh, V., Ibáñez, L. M., Mäkinen, G., Virtanen, E., . . . Kovács, A. (2019). The mathematics of the unicorn's horn. Imaginary Journal of Improbable Mathematics, 27(1), 78–86. http://doi.org/10.0000/3mp7y-537

Formatting website documents & pages

Webpages and website documents are now treated as stand-alone documents, which means that those titles are in italics and website names appear in normal typeface.

Previously:

Goodman, B. (2020, January 17). Could your Fitbit help detect the flu? WebMD. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20200117/could-your-fitbit-help-detect-the-flu

Now:

Goodman, B. (2020, January 17). Could your Fitbit help detect the flu? WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20200117/could-your-fitbit-help-detect-the-flu

Citing an entire website

• APA 6 indicated that we should make an in-text citation for each entire Website we refer to in our papers, and also provide a References page citation for them.
• For APA 7, after referring to an entire Website in your paper, provide its homepage URL in parentheses, as an active link, immediately after. You may then omit the Website from your list of References.
• Example from an HD 101 student's Student Success Plan paper:

In addition to consulting with TCC Research Librarians and the Writing and Tutoring Center, my student success plan will include bookmarking and using the Purdue OWL (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html) which is a valuable resource for writing and research help and for citation support.

(If you are referring to a single page from a Website, or a document you retrieved from a Website, cite as you would any article, both in-text, and as an entry in your References page.)

Retrieval links, References citations

• For a Webpage citation, APA 6 directed us to type “Retrieved from” just before the Webpage URL.
• For APA 7 we eliminate the “Retrieved from” and get right on with the URL (activated as a hyperlink):
• Example:

TCC Librarians. (2020). Citing sources. TCC Library website: http://tacomacc.libguides.com/Citing_Sources/apa

• (If  information on a Webpage is likely to be unstable [it might disappear or, in the case of the example below, change content frequently], APA 7 still advises us to include a date of retrieval)

Centers for Disease Control. (2020). Coronavirus (COVID-19). Retrieved February 29, 2020 from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/index.html

DOIs and URLs

There are a lot more rules... sorry:

General summary for electronic (non-print) sources and the inclusion of retrieval information (DOIs and URLs):

• If there is a DOI, use the DOI (DOIs are only used for scholarly journal articles).
• If there is no DOI (either you can't find one, or the source is an e-book, magazine article, or newspaper article), do nothing. Do not substitute with a library database URL, for example.
• If there is no DOI, BUT the source is available in full text, free of charge on the open Web (not a library database), you can replace the DOI with the document's URL (web address).
• However, as a student, your instructor might prefer it if you use a library database URL so sources can be accessed more quickly when grading 26 papers!
  • Always ask your instructor if they have any unique course-specific citation rules they would like you to follow.

If you do not know what a DOI is, and/or the above doesn't make much sense to you, please see the link below.

Citing books and ebooks

References page citations for books used to include the publisher's location (a city, and perhaps state as well). APA no longer requires the publisher's location. This applies to both print books and e-books.

Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. New York: One World.

As with periodicals, if an e-book is accessed through a subscription database, such as EBook Central, do not include a retrieval URL:

Tuck, S. & Gates, H. L. (2014). The night Malcolm X spoke at the Oxford Union: A transatlantic story of antiracist protest. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

And also as with periodicals, if an ebook is available freely online to anyone, include a retrieval URL:

Hurston, N. Z. (1930). Poker! http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/15902/pg15902-images.html

eReader edition of a book? (Kindle for example)

APA 7 no longer requires a format note [Kindle]; cite as you would any other book

Paper formatting: The "running head"

• Quick and easy: The APA has decided that student papers do not need "running heads", just page numbers. Read on for more information.
• A “running head” is a shortened version of  a paper’s title, appearing on each page in the left-side header space of a paper.
  • APA 6 required a running head on each page of a paper. On the cover page, the running head was preceded with the words: “Running head" and then the SHORTENED PAPER TITLE in all caps.
• For professional papers, omit the words “Running head:” from the running head on the cover page and just use a SHORTENED PAPER TITLE as before. If you have struggled to make the cover page header different from the rest of the paper, this solves that little problem.
• See the links below

Singular "they"

The APA is ignoring grammar conventions in favor of reducing bias and gender-binary assumption. APA 7 endorses the use of they/them when the gender of a person is unknown or, as is most common, irrelevant.

This is directly from the APA:

• Writers should use the singular “they” in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) when referring to a specific, known person who uses “they” as their pronoun.
• When referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context, use the singular “they” as the pronoun. For example, if you use nouns like “person,” “individual,” or “everyone” or phrases like “every teacher” or “each nurse” in a sentence, use the appropriate form of the pronoun “they” [rather than she/he] as needed.

Bias-free language

Always put the person first when necessarily describing specific aspects of individuals. Instead of "the homeless" or "homeless people" use "people who are living homeless". Instead of "epileptic" use "person with epilepsy". Similarly, put the identity first, instead of "autistic person", use " a person with autism."

Accessibility

While accessibility is not new to APA 7, there are new, and more specific, guidelines adhering to WCAG 

For example, URLs should be formatted as descriptive text, instead of labeling the link, and then providing a URL separately:

Before:

Please click on the link below to read more about APA 7 and accessibility

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/accessibility#urls

Now:

Read more about APA 7 and accessibility here.