How to Cite Sources in APA (7th Edition), With Examples

Citing your sources is how you give credit for the ideas, data, and words you borrow, and it lets any reader trace a claim back to where it came from. APA style, created by the American Psychological Association, is the citation system used most in psychology, education, nursing, business, and the social sciences. When an instructor asks for APA, they almost always mean the 7th edition, released in 2019, which streamlined several older rules.

Getting citations right protects you from accidental plagiarism and makes your work look careful and credible. This guide covers how APA citations actually work: the difference between in-text citations and the reference list, the general pattern every reference follows, correct examples for the sources students cite most, and the small formatting details that quietly cost marks. Every name and title in the examples below is invented, so copy the pattern, never the content.

In-text citations vs. the reference list

APA uses a two-part, author–date system, and the two parts always work together. An in-text citation is a short pointer inside your sentence that names the author and the year, such as (Rivera, 2021). The reference list is the alphabetized page at the end of your paper that gives the full details for every source you used. The in-text citation says who and when; the matching reference entry says exactly where.

One rule keeps the two halves in sync: every source cited in your text must appear in the reference list, and every entry in the reference list must be cited at least once in your text. If a source shows up in one place but not the other, something needs fixing. Think of the in-text citation as a nickname and the reference entry as the full mailing address.

The general reference structure

Almost every APA reference answers four questions in the same order — who, when, what, and where:

‘Who’ is the author, written surname first, then initials. ‘When’ is the year of publication in parentheses. ‘What’ is the title of the specific work you are citing. ‘Where’ is the larger source that holds it — a journal, a publisher, or a website. Once you can see these four slots, the different source types are just variations on one shape, with a few extra details slotted in.

How to write in-text citations

You can cite in two ways. A parenthetical citation puts everything in brackets, usually at the end of the sentence. A narrative citation weaves the author into your sentence and leaves only the year in brackets. Use whichever reads more naturally in the moment.

When you quote word for word, add a page number: (Rivera, 2021, p. 15). For a work with two authors, name both every time, joined by ‘&’ inside parentheses or by ‘and’ when the names appear in your sentence. For three or more authors, name only the first, followed by ‘et al.’, from the very first mention — for example (Rivera et al., 2021).

Reference examples for common sources

Here are correctly formatted APA 7 references for the four source types students cite most. The authors and titles are fictional, so focus on the structure, spacing, and punctuation rather than the words themselves.

In these entries, the parts you italicize are the journal name with its volume number, the book title, the edited-book title, and the web-page title. Article titles and chapter titles are never italicized. Notice too that article, book, chapter, and web-page titles use sentence case — only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalized — while the journal name keeps title case.

Formatting your reference list and avoiding plagiarism

Your reference list begins on its own page, headed References in bold and centered. Entries are alphabetized by the first author’s surname and use a hanging indent, meaning the first line sits at the left margin while every line after it is indented half an inch. The whole page is double-spaced, exactly like the rest of your paper.

Finally, remember that citations are your main protection against plagiarism, and quotations are not the only thing that needs one. If you paraphrase an idea, summarize a finding, or reuse someone’s data, you still cite it — putting a point in your own words does not make it your own idea. When you genuinely cannot tell whether something needs a citation, cite it. Over-citing is a minor style wrinkle; under-citing is an academic-integrity problem.

APA citations feel fiddly at first, but they always come back to the same author–date logic and the same four-slot structure. Learn the pattern once, keep this page open for the specifics, and citing your sources becomes a quick, routine step instead of a scramble the night before your paper is due.