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Updated . Example details checked against A List Apart, alistapart.com/article/writeliving (also the Purdue OWL MLA example).
The APA format
Pattern
Last name, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page in sentence case. Site Name. URL
- Author as last name and initials. Use an ampersand (&) before the last of two to twenty authors.
- Date as specific as the page gives: (2002, August 16).
- Title in italics and sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and names (APA 7, 6.17).
- Site name in plain text. Leave it out when it is the same as the author (APA 7, 10.16).
- URL in full, with https://, and no period after it.
A real example
Reference entry
Bernstein, M. (2002, August 16). 10 tips on writing the living web. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/writeliving/
In-text citation
(Bernstein, 2002)
When details are missing
- No author: move the title to the front, before the date: Title of page. (2002, August 16). Site Name. URL. In the text, use a short form of the title in italics. See a web page with no author.
- No date: write (n.d.) in both the reference and the citation: (Bernstein, n.d.).
- No page numbers: for a quotation, give a paragraph number, (Bernstein, 2002, para. 4), or a heading and paragraph: (Bernstein, 2002, Tip 3 section, para. 2).
- Pages that change: add a retrieval date only for content designed to change, such as a live data page: “Retrieved November 3, 2026, from URL.”
The same page with no date
Reference entry
Bernstein, M. (n.d.). 10 tips on writing the living web. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/writeliving/
In-text citation
(Bernstein, n.d., para. 4)
Common mistakes
- Title case for the page title. APA uses sentence case for page titles: 10 tips on writing the living web.
- “Retrieved from” before every URL. APA 7 dropped it. Use a retrieval date only for pages meant to change.
- A period after the URL. APA ends the entry with the URL and nothing after it.
- Leaving out the year in a quotation. Every APA citation has a date, even with a paragraph number: (Bernstein, 2002, para. 4).
Or let Format do it.
Paste the page's link and Format reads its title, author and date where the page publishes them; check them, and fill in what the page leaves out. Format writes the References entry and the in-text citation in APA 7, exactly as shown above, and builds the References page when you export to Word or PDF. MLA and APA are free.
Questions
Is the website name italic in APA?
No. The title of the page is italic; the site name is plain text. A newspaper or magazine on the web follows the article pattern instead, with the publication in italics.
When do I use n.d.?
When the page shows no date of publication or update. A copyright year in the site footer is not the date of the page.
Do I cite the whole website or the page?
The page you used. To mention a whole site in passing, give its name and URL in your sentence; it needs no reference entry (APA Style, “Citing a website in general”).
More citation guides
The same source in other styles
Similar sources in APA
- Web page with no author in APA 7
- YouTube video in APA 7
- Newspaper or magazine article in APA 7
- Social media post in APA 7
Every source kind is on the APA page, and every style is on How to cite.