APA 7th Edition Formatting Guide

1. Quick Overview

APA 7th edition follows an author–date system, emphasizing:

• In-text citations use author and year, for example (OpenAI, 2024).
• The reference list is alphabetized by authors’ last names; entries use sentence case; include a DOI when available.
• Journal and book titles are italicized; article titles are not; do not add a period after URLs.

This guide is organized into three parts: In-Text Citation, Reference List, and Special Cases. It aims to help you apply APA format accurately in academic writing:

2. In-Text Citation Format

When to Cite

• Paraphrasing others’ ideas, theories, data, or conclusions (recommended to cite).
• Quoting definitions, key sentences, or exact wording (must cite).
• Using non–common-knowledge facts, statistics, or figures (must cite).
• Using analysis, answers, or content generated by AI tools (recommended to note model/provider and year).

How to Format

• Two basic forms:
  • Narrative: The author is part of the sentence; the year follows, e.g., Zhang (2023).
  • Parenthetical: Author and year together in parentheses, e.g., (Zhang, 2023).
• Number of authors:
  • 1 author: (Zhang, 2023) / Zhang (2023).
  • 2 authors: use & inside parentheses and and in narrative, e.g., (Li & Chen, 2022) / Li and Chen (2022).
  • 3+ authors: always use et al., e.g., (Garcia et al., 2021).

Author count at a glance:

• Group authors: On first mention, include abbreviation, e.g., (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020); thereafter (WHO, 2020).
• No author: Use the title in place of the author. Article/webpage titles use double quotes, e.g., (“Higher Education Quality Report”, 2021); titles of stand-alone works are italicized.
• No date: Use n.d., e.g., (DeepResearch Lab, n.d.).
• Page/paragraph numbers: For direct quotes use p. (printed page) or para. (web paragraph), e.g., (OpenAI, 2024, p. 12) / (OpenAI, 2024, para. 4).
• Multiple sources in one parenthesis: Separate with semicolons and sort alphabetically by author, e.g., (Chen, 2022; Li & Wang, 2020; WHO, 2020).
• Multiple works by the same author: Sort by ascending year (Wang, 2019, 2021); add a/b for the same year, e.g., (Wang, 2021a, 2021b).
• Repeated narrative citations within one paragraph: First mention write full Zhang (2023); later mentions in the same paragraph may omit the year. Do not omit the year in parenthetical citations.
• Same surname, different authors (narrative): Add initials to disambiguate, e.g., J. Wang (2020) vs L. Wang (2020).
• Secondary citation: (Original Author, Year, as cited in Secondary Author, Year); cite the original work whenever possible.
• AI models: Include provider and year, e.g., (OpenAI, 2024), (Anthropic, 2024), (Google DeepMind, 2023).

Examples

• Basic paraphrase (parenthetical): Studies show task chunking improves writing efficiency (Zhang, 2023).
• Basic paraphrase (narrative): Zhang (2023) found that task chunking improves writing efficiency.
• Two authors: Recent work shows attention improves generation quality (Li & Chen, 2022).
• 3+ authors: Complex tasks can be coordinated by multi-agent systems (Garcia et al., 2021).
• Group author (first + subsequent): (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020); thereafter (WHO, 2020).
• No author webpage: Ministry of Education policies have broad impact (“Higher Education Quality Report”, 2021).
• No date: The methods repository is frequently cited (DeepResearch Lab, n.d.).
• Direct quote (page): As stated, “Evidence-driven approaches can reduce bias” (OpenAI, 2024, p. 12).
• Direct quote (paragraph): “Models require clear task boundaries” (Anthropic, 2024, para. 5).
• Multiple sources in one parenthesis: Synthesizing multiple lines of evidence (Chen, 2022; Li & Wang, 2020; WHO, 2020).
• Same author, different years: Ongoing improvements have been reported (Wang, 2019, 2021).
• Same author, same year: Two studies reached consistent conclusions (Wang, 2021a, 2021b).
• Secondary citation: (Miller, 2018, as cited in Huang, 2024).
• Same surname, different initials (narrative): J. Wang (2020) and L. Wang (2020) offer different perspectives.

Copyable Templates (In-Text)

Narrative: Author (Year) …
Parenthetical: (Author, Year)
Two authors: Author A and Author B (Year) / (Author A & Author B, Year)
Three or more: Author et al. (Year) / (Author et al., Year)
Group author (first/subsequent): (Full Name [Abbrev], Year) / (Abbrev, Year)
Direct quote (page/paragraph): (Author, Year, p. xx) / (Author, Year, para. x)
Multiple sources together: (Author A, Year; Author B, Year; Organization, Year)
Same author, different years: (Author, 2019, 2021); same year a/b: (Author, 2021a, 2021b)
No author: ("Title", Year) or italic Title (Year)
No date: (Author, n.d.)
AI models: (OpenAI, 2024) / (Anthropic, 2024) / (Google DeepMind, 2023)

3. Reference List Format

Minimal in-text example recap: (OpenAI, 2024); full reference example: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

What Each Part Means

• Author: Last name first; given names as initials. Separate authors with commas; use & before the final author. For 21+ authors: list the first 19, use an ellipsis (…), then the final author.
• Year: In parentheses. Use n.d. for “no date.” Specific dates may be written as (2024, March 14).
• Title: Use sentence case for article/chapters/books. Proper nouns are capitalized. Book and journal title rules differ (see below).
• Source:
  • Journals: Journal title in Title Case and italic; volume italic; issue in parentheses (not italic); page range.
  • Books/reports/software: Italicize title; use brackets to indicate type when needed, e.g., [Dataset], [White paper], [Large language model].
  • DOI/URL: Prefer DOI (https://doi.org/…). If no DOI, use URL; do not end with a period.

Punctuation and Capitalization Rules

• Major fields (author, year, title, source) are separated by periods.
• Journal title and volume are italicized; article title is not; issue number in parentheses; no p. before pages.
• Titles use sentence case; journal titles use Title Case.
• Do not add “Retrieved from” before URLs or DOIs unless a retrieval date is needed (for dynamic pages).
• Use a hanging indent of 0.5 inches for each entry.

Examples

1. Journal article (with DOI): Wang, L. J., & Xu, Y. (2021). AI-informed literature review strategies. Journal of Academic Writing, 15(2), 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1234/jaw.2021.015

2. Journal article (no DOI, with URL): Zhang, H. (2020). Writing assistants in higher education. Open Education Journal, 8(1), 1–12. https://openedu.example.org/oej/vol8/1

3. Book: Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.

4. Chapter in an edited book: Chen, P. (2022). Automated deep research pipelines. In L. Wang & Y. Xu (Eds.), Advances in academic writing automation (pp. 33–58). ScholarMind Press.

5. Conference paper: Li, Q., & Sun, R. (2023, June). Prompt strategies for long-form academic writing. In Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 1234–1245). ACL. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-main.100

6. Report/white paper: Chen, P. (2022). Deep research workflows for graduate theses [White paper]. ScholarMind Lab.

7. Webpage/online page: World Health Organization. (2020). Global research roadmap for COVID-19. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240001239

8. Software/AI model: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

9. Other AI tools: Anthropic. (2024). Claude 3 Opus [Large language model]. https://claude.ai Google DeepMind. (2023). Gemini technical report [Model card]. https://deepmind.google/techreport

10. Preprint: Liu, Y., & Zhao, T. (2023). Efficient literature mapping with LLMs. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.01234

11. Dataset: Open Research Group. (2022). Academic writing corpus v2 [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1234567

Copyable Templates (References)

Journal article:
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue), xx–xx. https://doi.org/xxxx

Book:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title: Subtitle (Edition). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxx

Edited book chapter:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxx

Conference paper:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year, Month). Title of paper. In Proceedings of Conference (pp. xx–xx). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxx

Webpage:
Organization Name. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL

Report/white paper:
Author/Organization. (Year). Title [White paper/Report]. Publisher/Organization. URL

Software/AI model:
Company. (Year). Product name (Version) [Large language model/Software]. URL

Dataset:
Author/Organization. (Year). Title [Dataset]. Repository. https://doi.org/xxxx

4. Special Cases

• Multiple uses (multiple mentions/sources):
  • Repeated narrative citations within a paragraph: later mentions may omit the year; parenthetical citations must retain the year.
  • Multiple sources in one parenthesis: Alphabetize by author and separate with semicolons (Chen, 2022; Li & Wang, 2020; WHO, 2020).
  • Multiple works by the same author: Order by year; distinguish same-year works with a/b, and reflect 2021a/2021b in the reference list.
• Paraphrasing vs direct quote:
  • Paraphrase: Page numbers are optional; consider adding key page numbers for traceability.
  • Direct quotes: For < 40 words, use double quotes and add p./para.; for ≥ 40 words, use a block quote and place the citation at the end.
• Different versions:
  • For software/models/reports, indicate version or date in the title, e.g., ChatGPT (Mar 14 version), v2.1, 2024 Update.
  • Preprint, accepted, and published versions should be formatted according to their actual source type.
• Other AI tools:
  • Claude and Gemini can be cited as software/model entries with bracketed types such as [Large language model] or [Model card].

Common Variations and Troubleshooting

• Authors > 20: List the first 19, add an ellipsis, then the final author.
• Chinese author names: Standardize to pinyin, e.g., Wang, L.; optionally include the original Chinese title in brackets after the translated title when appropriate.
• No author: Start the reference with the title; use the title in the in-text citation.
• Do not add a period after URLs; always format DOIs as https://doi.org/…
• Journal volume is italic; issue number is not; use an en dash – for page ranges.

Tips: During writing, you can use Knowee Writer, a professional academic writing tool, to quickly search citations, auto-extract authors/years/DOIs, and batch-generate in-text citations and reference entries to reduce manual formatting.