APA 7 reference generator

Make APA 7th edition references and in-text citations. Paste a DOI or ISBN to fill in the details, or type them in. Your list stays in this browser.

FreeNo sign-upAPA 7th edition

Source type

Author

Leave the author empty if there is none. The title then goes first.

Year published. For a web page, the year it was last updated. Leave empty for n.d.
APA adds the month and day after the year.
APA uses a capital only for the first word, the first word after a colon, and names.

Reference

In-text citation

Adds the page to the citation, such as (Smith, 2020, p. 5). Not saved with the reference.

How APA style works

APA is an author–date style from the American Psychological Association. Each time you use a source, you put a short citation in your text: the author's family name and the year, such as (Austen, 2003). At the end of your work, a reference list gives the full details of every source, in alphabetical order by author.

This generator follows the 7th edition, published in 2019. It is the current edition and the one most courses ask for.

Examples

Book
Austen, J. (2003). Pride and prejudice. Penguin.
Journal article with a DOI
LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
Web page by an organization
World Health Organization. (2023, October 12). Influenza (seasonal). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal)
Chapter in an edited book
Green, A. (2018). Social media and youth. In T. Black & S. White (Eds.), Digital lives (pp. 45–67). Routledge.

Common questions

What if there is no date?

Write n.d. (no date) in place of the year, both in the citation and in the reference list: (World Health Organization, n.d.).

How many authors do I list?

In the reference list, list up to 20 authors. For 21 or more, list the first 19, then an ellipsis, then the last author. In the text, cite one or two authors by name, such as (Smith & Jones, 2020). For three or more, give the first author followed by et al. from the first citation: (Smith et al., 2021).

Do I need the date I accessed a website?

Usually not. APA 7 asks for a retrieval date only when the page is meant to change over time and is not archived, such as a live dashboard or a social media profile. This generator leaves it out.

Which words in a title get a capital?

In the reference list, titles of articles, books, reports and web pages use sentence case: a capital only for the first word, the first word after a colon, and names. Journal and newspaper names keep their capitals. Details filled in from a DOI often come in title case, so check them.

Two works by the same author in the same year?

Add a, b and so on after the year, in title order: (Smith, 2020a) and (Smith, 2020b). The generator does this for you when both are in your list.

What is the difference between APA and Harvard?

Both are author–date styles. APA puts a full stop after the year in brackets and uses "&" between authors. Harvard uses "and", and its punctuation differs in small ways. For Harvard references, use the Harvard generator.

Is my list saved?

Your list is kept in this browser on this device only. Nothing is sent to a server, except a DOI or ISBN you choose to look up. Those go to Crossref and Open Library to fetch the details.