APA Citation Generator
Format references in APA 7th edition for books, journal articles and web pages, with the in-text citation shown beside the reference-list entry.
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APA citation
Reference-list entry and in-text citation from the source details. Fields change with the source type; empty fields are left out, never guessed.
| Given name(s) | Family name | Group | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|
Tick "Group" for an organisation (put its full name in the family-name box). Leave empty when no author is known.
Enter the source details
Fill in at least a title or an author; the citation updates as you type.
What this tool does and does not do
About APA Citation
References formatted to APA 7th edition, which differs from the 6th in ways that are small individually and obvious in aggregate to anyone marking it — up to twenty authors listed rather than seven, no publisher location, DOIs as full URLs. A free citation generator with no account and no paywall. References are formatted right here and never sent away.
How to use APA Citation
- Pick what you are citingA book, an article or a page on the web. Each takes a different set of fields and produces a different shape of entry.
- Enter the detailsAuthors, year, title, and the publication information the type requires.
- Take both formsThe reference-list entry and the parenthetical in-text citation are generated together.
What changed in the 7th edition
The differences that catch people out: up to twenty authors are now listed in full before an ellipsis, where the 6th stopped at seven; the publisher location is gone entirely; DOIs are presented as full doi.org links rather than prefixed with "doi:"; and "Retrieved from" is dropped before a URL unless a retrieval date is genuinely needed. A reference formatted to the 6th looks nearly right and is visibly dated.
What it does not do
- Follows the published 7th edition. Institutional variations exist and take precedence over it.
- Unusual sources — datasets, software, personal communications, social media — have specific forms this may not cover.
- Nothing verifies that the details you entered are correct. A typo in a year becomes a confidently formatted wrong citation.
APA Citation: questions people ask
- How many authors should I list?
- In the reference list, up to twenty, with an ellipsis before the final author beyond that. In text, one or two authors are named and three or more become the first author followed by et al. from the first citation onwards.
- Do I need a retrieval date for a web page?
- Only when the content is designed to change and is not archived — a live statistics dashboard, for instance. For a stable page, the 7th edition drops both the retrieval date and "Retrieved from".
- How do I cite a YouTube video in APA 7th edition?
- Choose Online video as the source type, enter the creator as the author, the video title, the upload date and the URL, and put YouTube in the Channel or platform field. The reference comes out with the title followed by [Video] and the platform name, and the in-text citation is shown next to it.
Questions about ToolsVerse itself — privacy, cost, what happens to your files — are answered in the frequently asked questions.
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