Citing Sources in APA 7

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When most people think of APA, they think of citations and research.

That is partially accurate because APA style does provide a format for including and giving credit for research in our writing.

But APA is actually much more than just citations…

APA stands for American Psychological Association, which is the organization that creates and maintains the APA style. 

APA style is a broad but specific set of guidelines for clear and precise scholarly writing.

APA style provides writers with directions, uniformity, and consistency for clear, concise, and organized writing:

• Formatting - How we set up technical aspects of the paper/the "look" of the paper
• Organization - Ensures that the order of ideas presented are predictable and consistent
• Language - Provides guides and suggestions to ensure the language we use in our writing is respectful, bias-free, and "academic"
• Citation of Research - Allows us to easily and briefly give credit to our sources within our writing
• References - Provides a uniform structure to give readers all of the information they need to know exactly where our comformation came from (and find it themselves, if they choose).

Almost ALL college coursework requires writing to follow guidelines for some kind of uniform format (APA, MLA, AMA, Chicago, etc.) and almost ALL post-secondary work requires the ability to find, use, and cite research.

APA is used by millions of people around the world in the workplace for fields such as:

• psychology
• education
• nursing
• social work

This guide was created collaboratively by various Western Technical College Learning Commons staff members and is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License.

Suggested citation for this guide: Western Technical College Learning Commons. (2023). Citing sources in APA 7. https://westerntc.libguides.com/APA7/. CC BY.

Recommendations on this guide follow those outlined in: American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). American Psychological Association.

In addition, this guide reuses some materials and content adapted from: Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2022). APA Style. https://owl.excelsior.edu/citation-and-documentation/apa-style/. Content used with permission thanks to their Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License.

Link to Excelsior Online Writing Lab and their (many!) additional resources below.