Developed by the American Psychological Association, APA* format is often used for research papers in psychology and the social sciences. Citations consist of two parts:
In-text citations--brief author-date attributions--are incorporated into the body of a paper after quoted or paraphrased information from a source. Reference entries, on the other hand, are complete citations arranged alphabetically on a separate reference page at the end of a paper. The Incorporating Outside Sources video on this page shows how in-text citations should look, and the APA Paper Formatting video shows how a paper, including the reference list, should be set up.
*This guide refers to the 7th edition (the latest version) of the APA Publication Manual.
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. by There are many citation generators on the Internet that will build citations for you (many of our library databases contain them, too). A couple of up-to-date online citation generators to try are:
Unfortunately, these tools often make mistakes, so if you decide to use them, we recommend double-checking the results with an APA manual or the library's handouts for in-text and reference citations.
In APA Style, learn the difference between title case and sentence case and when to use each.
