bibliottAPA Citation Generator — 7th edition
Free, accurate APA citations in seconds. Built for social sciences, psychology, education, nursing. AI fills in missing metadata; you copy or export.
What is APA 7th edition?
APA (American Psychological Association) is the most widely used citation style in the social and behavioral sciences. The current 7th edition (released October 2019) is required by most psychology, education, sociology and nursing programs in the United States.
When to use APA
- Psychology, education, and counseling courses
- Nursing and other health-science writing
- Sociology, anthropology, and political science
- Business, communication, and journalism programs that follow APA
- Most peer-reviewed journals in the social and behavioral sciences
APA quick reference
In-text citation
Author–date in parentheses: (Author, Year, p. number). Multiple authors use & inside parentheses and "and" outside.
(Smith, 2023, p. 45) — or — Smith (2023) found that…
Reference list (alphabetical, hanging indent)
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx
Smith, J. D., & Lee, A. R. (2023). The future of artificial intelligence in academic research. Nature Machine Intelligence, 5(3), 234–245. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00001-x
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book. Publisher.
Brown, P. (2021). Citation in the digital age. Oxford University Press.
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL
World Health Organization. (2024, March 14). Mental health: Strengthening our response. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health
Key APA formatting rules
- Hanging indent on every reference (0.5 inch).
- Italicize titles of books and journals; do not italicize article titles.
- Sentence case for article and book titles (only first word + proper nouns capitalized).
- Always include DOI as a hyperlink when available; URL when not.
- For up to 20 authors, list all of them; with 21+ list first 19, ellipsis, then the last.
Cite specific source types in APA
Cite AI tools in APA
Other citation styles
APA FAQ
No — APA 7 (2019) introduced major changes: simpler in-text citations for 3+ authors (use "et al." after first author from the start), DOIs formatted as URLs, no publisher location for books, and singular "they" is now accepted.
Student papers no longer require a running head unless your instructor asks for one. Professional papers (for publication) still need a shortened title in the header.
Treat the AI as the author: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com. We have a step-by-step guide on /cite-chatgpt-apa.