Citations Guide: APA Format

According to the APA, a reference (citation) has four elements, which answer four different questions about a source of information:

• Author: Who is responsible for this work?
• Date: When was this work published?
• Title: What is this work called?
• Source: Where can I retrieve this work? (APA, 2020, p. 283)

In your reference list entry, they are organized in the following order and format: Author. (Date.) Title. Source.

• Database article: Selin, H., & VanDeveer, S. D. (2007). Political science and prediction: What’s next for U.S. climate change policy? The Review of Policy Research, 24(1). Gale in Context: Global Issues. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A163422168/GIC?u=mlin_w_shhs&sid=bookmark-GIC&xid=6a10499f
• Webpage: Climate change. (2022, December 1). United States Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/climate-change
• News article online: Shao, E. (2022, December 6). Renewables will overtake coal by early 2025, energy agency says. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/climate/iea-renewable-energy-coal.html
• Book: Klein, N., & Stefoff, R. (2021). How to change everything: The young human’s guide to protecting the planet and each other. Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
• Book chapter: Climate change. (2016). In Today’s Social Issues: Democrats and Republicans (pp. 51–61). ABC-CLIO.

• Authors are listed by their last names and then first and middle initials, i.e. Author, A. A.
• Multiple authors for one work are separated by commas, and then an ampersand for the final name, i.e. Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C.
• If there is no credited author, move the title of the work to the author position, i.e. Title of article. (2022).
• Dates go in parentheses, and are listed in order of year, month, day, i.e. (2022, December 5).
• If there is no date on the work, use (n.d.) after the author position, i.e. Author, A. A. (n.d.).
• Titles use sentence case. Works part of something else, i.e. journal articles, are not italicized, i.e. Title of article: Continuation of title. Works that stand alone, i.e. books and webpages, are italicized, i.e. Title of book: Continuation of title.
• Sources use title case. For works part of something else, that greater whole is the source, and if it is a periodical or a book, it is italicized, i.e. Title of Source.
• For works that stand alone, the source is the publisher (for a book), or the website where it was found, followed by the URL (which should be hyperlinked) if applicable. These use title case but are not italicized, i.e. (for a website) Title of Source. https://url.com
• If the work is a volume and/or issue of a series, such as a journal, put the volume number in italics and the issue number in parentheses after it with no space, ie. Title of Source, 10(2).