APA, introduced in Citation Styles and Their Uses, puts the date near the front, because in the sciences how recent a study is matters. APA 7 calls its list References.
| Part | APA 7 pattern |
|---|---|
| In the text | (Delgado, 2022, p. 205) or Delgado (2022) found … |
| Two authors | (Reyes & Brandt, 2020); in a sentence: Reyes and Brandt (2020) |
| Three or more authors | (Kim et al., 2021), from the first citation |
| Reference author | Delgado, M.: last name, initials |
| Article or book title | sentence case: Sleep and memory in middle school students |
| Journal title and volume | title case, italic: Journal of Student Health, 14(3) |
Key idea
APA cites by author and date: (Lee, 2020, p. 12) in the text, and reference entries that begin Lee, A. B. (2020). Titles of articles and books use sentence case; journal names use title case and italics.
Why it works
In fields that build on new research, the year tells a reader at once whether a finding is fresh or has been tested by later work. Sentence case keeps long scientific titles easy to read.
Worked example: A book reference
Build the APA reference: Ellen Marsh, The Quiet Garden: Growing Food in Small Spaces, Larkspur Press, 2019.
- Author: Marsh, E.
- Date in parentheses: (2019).
- Title in italics and sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after the colon, and proper nouns.
- Publisher.
Answer: Marsh, E. (2019). The quiet garden: Growing food in small spaces. Larkspur Press.
Worked example: An in-text citation with a quotation
Cite a quotation from page 205 of Delgado’s 2022 article.
- Author, year, page with p., separated by commas.
Answer: (Delgado, 2022, p. 205)
Common mistake
Capitalizing every word of an article or book title in an APA reference. APA uses sentence case there: only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. (Journal names keep title case.) Check each capital in a title: is it one of those three? The sources in these examples are invented for practice: the authors, titles and publishers are made up.
APA 7 lists up to 20 authors in a reference, uses “et al.” in the text for three or more authors from the first citation, and gives DOIs as links (https://doi.org/…). It also endorses singular they.