The APA Citation Guide: A Complete Overview of APA 7th Edition

Updated May 2026.

APA Style is the citation and formatting system published by the American Psychological Association and used as the default in psychology, education, nursing, business, communication studies, and most of the social sciences. The current edition is APA 7th, published in 2019, and it is the edition you should be applying to any paper or manuscript today unless your instructor or journal has told you to use the older 6th edition for a specific reason.

This guide is the central reference point for APA Style at Editor World. It explains what APA covers, how the 7th edition differs from the 6th, what the four-step workflow looks like for applying APA to a finished document, and which of Editor World's deeper APA articles to read for each specific question that comes up. It is the orientation map for the cluster, not the line-by-line manual. The deeper mechanics, source-type examples, title page components, and running head rules each live in their own articles, linked throughout.

What APA Style Is

APA Style is a complete editorial framework, not just a citation format. It is published by the American Psychological Association and maintained at apastyle.apa.org, which is the most authoritative free APA reference and is updated regularly between print editions. The full published reference is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition, available in hardcover, spiral-bound, and paperback formats.

APA is the default citation style across most of the social sciences. The disciplines that use it as the standard include psychology, education, nursing, social work, communication studies, business, sociology, anthropology, public health, criminology, and applied linguistics. It is also widely used in policy research, evaluation studies, and applied research in healthcare, education, and government. If you are writing for any of these fields and your instructor or journal has not told you otherwise, APA is the assumed default.

For an overview of how APA compares to the other major citation styles (MLA and Chicago), see Editor World's overview of citation styles, which explains when each style is required and how the discipline determines the choice.

Why APA Emphasizes the Publication Year

The defining feature of APA in-text citations is the inclusion of the publication year. In APA, every citation in the body of the paper carries the author's last name and the year. MLA citations carry author and page. Chicago footnotes carry the full bibliographic detail. The choice is not arbitrary.

APA emphasizes the year because it is the citation style of fields where research currency matters. In a paper about depression treatment, a 2024 randomized trial outweighs a 1998 case study, and the reader needs to see that distinction immediately. A reader who sees (Smith, 2024) and (Jones, 1998) on the same page already knows which study is more recent before reading further. In a literature paper using MLA, that question is irrelevant; what matters is which page of which novel the writer is citing. APA's emphasis on the year encodes a social-science assumption about how evidence ages.

Understanding this makes the rest of APA easier to apply. Once you know why the year is up front, you stop forgetting to include it.

What Changed in APA 7th Edition

APA 7th edition was published in October 2019 and replaced the 6th edition (2009). If you learned APA more than five or six years ago and have not refreshed your knowledge, you are probably still applying 6th edition rules to documents that should follow the 7th. The differences are substantive enough that a 6th-edition reference list will look visibly wrong to a current reviewer.

The most important 7th-edition changes are listed below.

• Student paper format introduced. APA 6th treated all papers as journal manuscript drafts. APA 7th formally distinguished student papers from professional papers and gave each its own title page format, with different running-head requirements. Student papers no longer require the "Running head:" prefix.
• Three-or-more-author citations simplified. Under APA 6th, the first citation of a source with three to five authors listed all names, with "et al." appearing on subsequent citations. Under APA 7th, "et al." is used from the first citation onward whenever the source has three or more authors. This is one of the most-missed changes in revised papers.
• Publisher location dropped from book references. APA 6th required the city and state (or country) of the publisher in book reference entries. APA 7th drops the location entirely. Just the publisher name appears.
• Up to 20 authors listed in references. APA 6th capped the reference list at seven authors before requiring an ellipsis. APA 7th raised the cap to 20 authors before the ellipsis kicks in. For papers in genomics, large clinical trials, and other multi-author fields, this is a meaningful change.
• DOI format updated. APA 7th formats DOIs as hyperlinks beginning with "https://doi.org/" rather than the old "doi:" prefix. URLs and DOIs no longer use "Retrieved from" before them unless a retrieval date is required.
• Singular "they" formally accepted. APA 7th endorses singular "they" as an acceptable pronoun, both as a generic third-person pronoun and as the pronoun a specific person uses for themselves.
• Expanded guidance on bias-free language. APA 7th significantly expanded the bias-free language chapter, with detailed guidance on writing about race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and socioeconomic status.
• Wider range of acceptable fonts. APA 7th broadened acceptable fonts beyond Times New Roman 12pt to include Calibri 11pt, Arial 11pt, Lucida Sans Unicode 10pt, Georgia 11pt, and Computer Modern 10pt. Times New Roman 12pt remains a safe default.

If your reference style guide, citation manager, or department template was last updated before October 2019, it is almost certainly still applying 6th-edition rules. Verify the edition before submitting.

The Four Parts of an APA-Compliant Paper

APA governs four distinct areas of a finished document, and each one needs to be checked separately. A paper can have flawless in-text citations and still fail APA review because the title page is wrong, the reference list uses the wrong indent, or the headings don't follow the five-level system. Use this section as a checklist of what to verify before submitting.

1. The title page

APA 7th requires a title page on every paper, with two different formats depending on context. Student papers use the student format, which includes the paper title, the author's name, the institutional affiliation, the course number and name, the instructor's name, and the assignment due date, all centered. Professional papers (manuscripts for journal submission) use the professional format, which includes the title, the author names, the affiliations, an author note, and a running head in the header.

The title page is also the most commonly skipped element. Writers familiar with MLA from earlier coursework assume APA papers don't need one and submit with the heading in the upper-left corner instead. This is wrong in APA. For the full component-by-component walkthrough of both formats, with annotated examples and a decision tree for student versus professional, see Editor World's guide to APA style title pages.

2. The in-text citation

APA in-text citations follow an author-date format. Sources are cited in the body of the paper with the author's last name and the year of publication, in parentheses, with a comma between them. Direct quotes also require the page number. The same source can be cited either parenthetically at the end of a sentence or in the running text with the year alone in parentheses immediately after the author's name.

For sources with two authors, both names appear in every citation. For sources with three or more authors, only the first author's name appears, followed by "et al." This applies from the first citation onward in APA 7th, which is the change from APA 6th most often missed in revised papers. For the deeper mechanics including ampersand-versus-"and" rules, citations with no author, citations with no date, and the connection between in-text citations and the reference list, see Editor World's basic guide to APA style citation.

3. The reference list

Every paper formatted in APA ends with a reference list, titled References, on its own page after the body of the paper. Entries are organized alphabetically by the first author's last name. Each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line is flush with the left margin, and all subsequent lines are indented half an inch. The reference list is double-spaced throughout, with no extra blank lines between entries.

Every in-text citation in the paper must have a corresponding reference list entry, and every entry in the reference list must be cited somewhere in the body of the paper. This is one of the strictest rules in APA and one of the easiest to violate when references are added or removed during revision. The reference list format varies by source type (book, journal article, website, edited volume, dissertation, dataset, audiovisual source), and the basic guide to APA style citation covers the most common source types with worked examples. For websites and online sources specifically, the guide to citing a website in APA goes deeper into webpages, blog posts, journal articles with DOIs, and online lecture materials.

4. Document formatting

APA governs the visual layout of the entire document, not just the citations. Double-spacing throughout. One-inch margins on all four sides. An acceptable font at the recommended size (Times New Roman 12pt is the safest default). A page number in the upper right corner of every page, starting with the title page. A five-level heading system used to organize longer papers, with each level having a specific format for bold, italics, indentation, and capitalization. For professional papers, a running head in the upper-left corner of every page, in all capitals, no more than 50 characters.

The running head is the element most often handled incorrectly because the rules changed between APA 6th and 7th. Student papers no longer require a running head, just the page number. Professional papers still require one, but without the "Running head:" prefix that used to appear on the title page in APA 6th. For the full running head specification including length rules, capitalization, format for short titles, and the most common errors, see Editor World's guide to APA running heads.

A Four-Step Workflow for Applying APA Correctly

Most APA errors fall into one of four categories, and each category has a single best moment in the writing process to fix it. Working through APA in this sequence saves time and prevents the kind of late-stage rework that pushes deadlines.

Step 1: Set up the document before you write

Before typing your first paragraph, set the document up correctly. Open a new document, set the margins to one inch on all sides, set the font to an APA-acceptable size and family, set the line spacing to double, and insert the page number in the upper right corner of the header. If you are writing a professional paper, also insert the running head in the upper-left corner of the header. Add the title page as the first page using the format that matches your paper type (student or professional).

Doing this at the start takes about ten minutes. Doing it after the fact, when the document is full of content, takes longer and risks introducing pagination errors that cascade through the rest of the paper.

Step 2: Cite as you write, not after

Every time you paraphrase or quote a source, insert the in-text citation immediately. Do not write a draft with placeholder notes like "[cite Smith here]" and plan to fill them in later. Placeholders get missed, and a paper with eight or ten missed citations is a paper that comes back from review for source-attribution issues.

If you are using a citation manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, RefWorks), insert citations from the manager as you write. If you are formatting citations manually, keep the basic guide to APA style citation open in another tab and check each citation as you create it.

Step 3: Build the reference list incrementally

As you cite a source for the first time, add the full reference list entry to the references section at the end of the document. Do not wait until the paper is finished to build the reference list from scratch. Building incrementally catches problems early. If you cannot find the publisher, page range, or DOI for a source you are citing, you discover that the first time you cite it, not the night before submission.

For sources with formatting complications (edited volumes, conference papers, dissertations, government reports, datasets), look up the correct reference format in the source-type-specific Editor World guide before adding the entry. Trying to remember the exact comma placement for a chapter in an edited book at one in the morning the night before submission is how typos enter reference lists.

Step 4: Run a final APA compliance pass

Before submitting, do a dedicated pass focused only on APA compliance. Verify the title page format matches your paper type. Verify the page numbers run correctly from the title page through the references. Verify the headings follow the five-level system. Verify every in-text citation has a corresponding reference list entry and vice versa. Verify the reference list is in alphabetical order, uses hanging indents, and is double-spaced. Verify the running head, if required, is in the right place and under 50 characters.

This step is what professional editors do as part of an academic editing pass. It catches the issues that fresh eyes find easily and that the writer's own eyes have stopped seeing.

Most Common APA Mistakes and How to Fix Them

The same five issues appear in nearly every paper that comes back marked up for APA errors. Each one is correctable in a single editing pass once you know to look for it.

Mistake 1: Applying APA 6th rules to a 7th-edition paper

Before: Hassan, Patel, Nguyen, Okafor, and Yamada (2023) reported that the intervention significantly reduced symptoms.

After (APA 7th): Hassan et al. (2023) reported that the intervention significantly reduced symptoms.

APA 7th uses "et al." from the first citation onward whenever the source has three or more authors. APA 6th required all names on the first citation. Listing all five authors above is correct under APA 6th and wrong under APA 7th. This is the single most-frequent edition-related error.

Mistake 2: Title case instead of sentence case

Before (APA References entry): Okafor, A. B. (2019). Aging in Place: Community Design and Health Outcomes. Princeton University Press.

After (APA References entry): Okafor, A. B. (2019). Aging in place: Community design and health outcomes. Princeton University Press.

APA uses sentence case for article and book titles in the reference list, capitalizing only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. Word processors automatically capitalize all major words, so the default formatting almost always needs to be corrected by hand.

Mistake 3: Including the publisher location in a book reference

Before (APA References entry): Okafor, A. B. (2019). Aging in place: Community design and health outcomes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

After (APA References entry): Okafor, A. B. (2019). Aging in place: Community design and health outcomes. Princeton University Press.

APA 7th dropped the publisher location from book references. Just the publisher name appears, no city, no state. This is another carryover from APA 6th that automated citation tools and older templates still introduce.

Mistake 4: Including a running head on a student paper

Under APA 6th, every paper carried a running head in the upper-left corner of every page. Under APA 7th, student papers no longer require a running head. Just the page number appears in the header. If you are writing a student paper and you have a running head, remove it. If your instructor explicitly asks for one, include it. For the full rules including when professional papers need a running head, see the guide to APA running heads.

Mistake 5: Reference list entries that don't match in-text citations

Every in-text citation in the paper must have a corresponding entry in the reference list, and every entry in the reference list must be cited somewhere in the body of the paper. Sources that appear in one place and not the other are a common APA error and an easy reviewer flag. The mismatch usually happens during revision: a paragraph gets deleted but the reference list entry stays, or a new source gets added to the body but never makes it to the references. The final APA compliance pass should include a one-to-one check of every citation against its reference list entry.

When APA Is Not the Right Style

If your discipline is psychology, education, nursing, the social sciences, business, or communication, APA is almost certainly the right style. If your discipline is something else, double-check before assuming APA applies.

English literature, comparative literature, languages, philosophy, and most of the humanities use MLA. History, art history, theology, music, religious studies, and trade book publishing use Chicago. Medical journals use AMA. Engineering and computer science use IEEE. Biology and the natural sciences sometimes use CSE. Within any of these fields, individual journals may have their own house style that overrides the discipline default.

For the side-by-side comparison of APA and MLA (the two most-confused styles), see Editor World's article on APA vs MLA format and the longer companion piece on the difference between MLA format and APA format. For an overview of all three major styles, see the overview of citation styles.

The Editors Who Handle APA Editing at Editor World

Editor World's academic editors include credentialed professionals from major US universities, with strong backgrounds in APA Style work across psychology, education, nursing, and the social sciences. Clients browse editor profiles, review credentials and verified client ratings, and choose the editor whose background matches the document. Below are several editors with credentials directly relevant to APA-style editing.

• nyanidoc. PhD and MA in Behavioral Psychology (UCLA), BA in Comparative Psychology (UC Riverside), Adjunct Assistant Professor in Psychology. Over 90,000 pages edited, with a 4.95/5 client rating across 3,800+ ratings. Psychology is the home discipline of APA, and nyanidoc's background is among the strongest matches for APA-style work on the Editor World roster. View profile.
• WriteAid. BA in English Literature (Binghamton University), MS in Psychology, PhD candidate at Walden University. Over 20 years of editing, teaching, and writing experience. 4.92/5 client rating. Strong background across APA in the social sciences and education. View profile.
• DrEditor. Education and Human Development professor, BA in Community Development and Urban Studies (University of Massachusetts), Graduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution (Florida International University). 4.83/5 client rating. Background in education and human development, where APA is the disciplinary default. View profile.

A full list of currently available editors is at editorworld.com/editors. Clients select their editor before submitting a document and can request a free sample edit to verify fit before committing.

Why Choose Editor World for APA Editing

• Recommended by the Boston University Economics Department. Editor World is among the editing services recommended to Boston University Economics students for academic editing support.
• Choose your editor. Browse profiles, credentials, and verified client ratings before submitting. You aren't assigned an editor at random.
• 100% human editing, no AI at any stage. APA compliance depends on judgment about edition-specific exceptions, journal-specific house overrides, and discipline-specific conventions that AI tools handle poorly. Editor World's editors do not use AI tools to edit documents.
• APA 7th expertise. Editors apply APA 7th edition rules correctly, including the changes from APA 6th that automated tools and older templates still get wrong.
• Native English speakers from the USA, UK, and Canada only. Editors apply the conventions of the variety required by your document.
• Certificate of editing. Available as an optional add-on. Many academic journals require or strongly recommend a certificate of editing when the submitting author is not a native English speaker.
• Fast turnaround. Same-day editing is available with 2-hour, 4-hour, and 8-hour options. Longer documents are scheduled for one-day, two-day, or three-day turnaround.

Get Your APA Paper Reviewed Before Submitting

APA compliance is the kind of work that takes attention to detail across every page of the document, and even careful writers miss things after weeks of revision. Editor World's academic editing services include APA review at the citation, reference list, title page, running head, and document-formatting level. The dissertation editing, journal article editing, and essay editing services apply the same standard to documents at each level.

Use the instant price calculator to see your cost before committing, or browse available editors to find someone with a background in your specific field.

Frequently Asked Questions About APA Style

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