APA7 style requires that in-text citations consist of the author(s) and date, eg (Smith, 2020). These rules specify how to write in-text citations and are based on the APA Style Blog's introduction to the Author-Date Citation System. Refer to the examples to see how the rules are applied in practice with the correct punctuation and formatting.

Author

• Multiple authors - if there are two authors, list both names in the same order as on the publication. For three or more authors, list the first author only followed by et al.
  • (Luna, 2020) OR (Salas & D'Agostino, 2020) OR (Martin et al., 2020)
  • In narrative references always spell out the 'and' - Salas and D'Agostino (2020)
• Organisational or group author - write the name out in full the first time it appears, but include the abbreviation in square brackets in the first appearance.  Thereafter use the abbreviation for all group author mentions. 
  • (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2020) in the first reference, then (NIMH, 2020) in subsequent references. 
• For Government agencies - the most specific level appears in the in-text reference, but the broader agency appears in the references list.
  • For example use 'National Institute of Nursing Research' in-text rather than 'Department of Health and Human Services'
• No author - Use a few words of the title in double quotation marks, and provide the date ("Title is", Year).  See APA missing information. 

Date

• Use the year of publication, for example (Author, year) 
• If no date, use "n.d.", for example, (Author, n.d.)
• For items that have been accepted for publication but not yet published, use "in press".

If citing multiple items in the same reference, place in alphabetical order with a semicolon between them.

Use of page numbers in-text

The general rule for APA7 is that you need to provide a page number in instances where you are directly quoting from a text however it is always best to paraphrase.  See this "Quotations" section of the APA Blog for guidance on when to use direct quotes and how to construct intext references from materials with and without page numbers.  

View our example text for a demonstration of the use of direct quotations and page numbers within an in-text reference. 

The reference list contains enough information for the reader to locate the source you have referenced. These rules specify the information to include in reference list entries and how they should be formatted, based on the APA Style Blog page Basic Principles of Reference List Entries and Elements of Reference List Entries. Refer to the examples to see how these rules are applied.

Author - who is responsible for the work?

• The author(s) may be a group or individual, and might be people who played other primary roles in creating the work, such as editors, directors of films or podcast hosts.
• Group authors are common, look at the title page or cover for the correct spelling, and always spell out the names of group authors in full in the end-text reference list (they can be abbreviated in second and subsequent in-text citations as per instructions above).
• Where layers of an organisation are listed, name the most specific agency as the author in the reference, and name the others in the Source element as the publisher (see examples)
• Provide surnames and initials for up to the first 20 authors, with an ampersand before the last author. If 21 or more authors, list the first 19, insert an ellipsis [...] and the last author's name, without an ampersand.

Date - when was the work published?

• Include the year of publication, and if more specific information is included (eg season, or month), include it after the year. For webpages, use the date it was last updated.
• If a work has been accepted for publication but not yet published, enter "in press" instead of a year. However, if a work is unpublished, informally published or in progress, enter the year the work was produced.
• Retrieval dates are only included if the work is unarchived and designed to change over time. Most online resources will not require a retrieval date when using APA referencing.

Title - what is the work called?

• For books or other publications with a stand-alone title, this is used. For works that are part of a greater whole (eg a journal article or a book chapter), then also provide the name of the larger work, ie the journal or the book, respectively, in the source element, which is listed next.
• Capitalisation - use sentence case for titles.

Source - where is the work available?

• For works that are part of a greater whole (eg journal articles or book chapters), include the name of the larger work (ie the journal or the whole book) along with the DOI (preferred) or URL if it has one. 
• For stand-alone works (eg whole books, reports, theses, films, datasets, social media, webpages) include the name of the publisher as well as the DOI (preferred) or URL if it has one.
• The publisher's location is not required in APA7. However, if a work is associated with a particular place (such as an artwork in a museum or a conference presentation) then do include the location.
• Only provide the name of the database if referring to original proprietary content, eg in UpToDate.