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APA Citation Style (7th edition)

Missing information?

What to do when...

  • There is no publication date: use (n.d.). See section 9.17 of the APA Publication Manual
  • There is no author: move the title of the webpage or article to the author position (before the date)
  • There is no page number (see section 8.28 of the APA Publication Manual): when appropriate you can use a paragraph number e.g. para. 3, a time stamp for videos e.g. 15:25, a section heading e.g. Discussion section, Introduction, etc.
  • You can't locate a similar example in the APA Publication Manual, refer to the Missing Reference Information chart from APA or try searching the APA Style blog

Page numbers and page alternatives

Works with page numbers (Sec. 8.25 APA Publication Manual, p. 270)
Abbreviate page to p. p. 26
Abbreviate pages to pp. pp. 36-38
Separate continuous pages with the dash and disparate pages with a comma pp. 36-38, 42.                                              
Works without page numbers  (Sec. 8.28 APA Publication Manual, p. 273)
  • some works like webpages or e-books may not have page numbers
  • use another location identifier instead of a page number
  • the form will depend on the resource type & how it is organized
Paragraph: Abbreviate paragraph/s to para. or paras. (Author, year, para. 2).
Full heading name or section name (Author, year, Anatomy section).
Abbreviated heading or section name in quotation marks i.e. use when the full heading is too long.
Note: use capitalization		 (Author, year, "What Parents" section).
A combination of identifiers (e.g. section name & paragraph number) (Author, year, "Roses" section, para. 2).
Audiovisual works (e.g. audiobooks, films, music, TV, YouTube): use the timestamp for the start of the quotations (Author, year, 11:35).

 

Author & date is the same. What do I do?

There will be times when you need to differentiate entries with the same author and year e.g. you're citing two webpages from the same corporate author and the same publication date. The solution is to add a lowercase letter after the year in both the in-text and reference citations.

Example with no date:

  • In your Reference list: Statistics Canada. (n.d.-a). ... and in-text (Statistics Canada, n.d.-a).
  • In your Reference list: Statistics Canada. (n.d.-b) .... and in-text (Statistics Canada, n.d.-b).

Example with a publication year:

  • In your Reference list with a date: Chesnut, H. (2020a)...and in-text (Chesnut, 2020a)
  • In your Reference list with a date: Chesnut, H. (2020b)...and in-text (Chesnut, 2020b)

 

Abbreviations

Abbreviations in references from APA (section 9.50 of the APA Publication Manual)

ed. edition
Rev. ed. revised edition
2nd ed. second edition
Ed. ; Eds. editor or editors
Trans. translators
Narr. ; Narrs. narrator(s)
n.d. no date
p. ; pp. page (p. 102) or pages (e.g. pp. 58-59)
Vol.; Vols. volume (e.g. Vol. 4); volumes (e.g. 4 Vols.)
No. number
Pt. part
Tech. Rep. technical report
Suppl. supplement

Location is only included for works with a specific location such as conference presentations. Provide the city, state/province or territory as applicable and the country. The two letter abbreviation is sufficient (APA Publication Manual, section 9.31)

Identifying alternate formats

Format description terms from APA (section 9.21 of the APA Publication Manual)

A format description in square brackets is used to clarify the resource type for your reader.

[Album] [Paper presentation]
[Audio podcast] or [Audio podcast episode] [Policy brief]
[Audiobook] [Poster presentation]
[Clip art] [PowerPoint slides]
[Conference session] [Press release]
[Editorial] [Song]
[Facebook page] [Special issue]
[Film] [Special section]
[Infographic] [Speech audio recording]
[interview] [Symposium]
[Lecture notes] [TV series] or [TV series episode]
[Lithograph] [Tweet] or [Twitter profile]
[Map] [Video] or [Video podcast]
[Painting] [Webinar]

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