Make an APA citation.

The APA 7 reference pattern

Every APA reference answers four questions in order: who, when, what, and where to find it. Author. (Date). Title. Source.

Author

Last name and initials: Walker, M. Up to 20 authors are listed, with an ampersand (&) before the last.

Date

The year in parentheses, with the month and day for newspapers, magazines, web pages and videos: (2002, August 16). No date: (n.d.).

Title

Sentence case: only the first word, the first word after a colon, and names get capitals. Italic for works that stand alone; plain for articles and chapters.

Source

The journal with its volume in italics, issue in parentheses and pages; the publisher for a book; the site name for a web page. Then the DOI as a link.

Real APA citations from the generator

The journal name keeps its capitals; titles of articles, books and web pages are in sentence case. The DOI ends the reference with no period after it.

Sentence case, and the names it misses

APA wants titles in the reference list in sentence case, and most sources print them in title case, so the generator converts every title for you. It keeps words in capitals (DNA, NASA, COVID-19) and words with a capital inside them (iPhone, McEwan).

What it cannot know is which ordinary-looking words are names. “Sleep Patterns of Students in Chicago” comes out as “Sleep patterns of students in chicago,” so fix the capital on Chicago in the form, or choose Keep it as typed and adjust the title yourself. Names of journals are never recased: APA keeps them in title case.

APA in-text citations

APA cites the author and the year, and a page when you quote: (Walker, 2017, p. 112). Type the page beside the in-text citation and the generator adds “p.” or “pp.” for a range.

• Two authors: (Hershner & Chervin, 2014). In your own sentence, write “and”: Hershner and Chervin (2014) found...
• Three or more authors: the first author and et al. from the very first citation: (Hershner et al., 2014).
• No date: (Bernstein, n.d.). No author: the title, shortened if long, in italics or quotation marks to match the reference.
• No page numbers in a quotation from a web page: give a paragraph number instead, such as para. 4.

Narrative citations, groups as authors and more are in APA in-text citations.

The References page

References starts on a new page, with the word References centered and bold at the top. Entries are double-spaced with a half-inch hanging indent and ordered by the first author’s last name. Two works by the same author in the same year get letters after the year, 2020a and 2020b, which the generator adds when both are in your list.

APA leaves out the date you visited a page, except for pages designed to change, such as a live dashboard; the generator does not add one. The References page guide has a full example.

Questions