APA 7th edition citation guide
Used in: Psychology, education, nursing, business, and most social sciences.
APA (American Psychological Association) style uses brief author–date citations in the text, each pointing to a full entry in an alphabetical reference list. The 7th edition (2020) simplified several rules — notably dropping “Retrieved from” for most URLs and the publisher location for books.
In-text citations
(Smith & Lee, 2021)Author surname and year in parentheses.
Smith and Lee (2021) found that…Author named in the sentence; year follows in parentheses.
(Smith & Lee, 2021, p. 215)Add a page number after the year.
(García et al., 2019)Use the first author + “et al.” from the first citation.
Reference list examples
Generated by Folio's citation engine — the same one that formats your bibliography as you write.
Quick checklist
Do
- Alphabetize the reference list by the first author’s surname.
- Use a hanging indent for every reference entry.
- Give a DOI as a full https link when one exists.
- Use “&” inside parentheses, but “and” in narrative sentences.
Don't
- Don’t include a publisher location (dropped in the 7th edition).
- Don’t write “Retrieved from” before a URL unless the content is likely to change.
- Don’t list more than 20 authors — use an ellipsis before the final author.
Cite in APA automatically
Paste a DOI into the free generator, or cite as you write in Folio.