Author lists
List the first 20 authors before truncating with an ellipsis and the final author. APA 6 cut off at 7. For two authors, use an ampersand between them. For three or more, list them all and join the last two with a comma plus ampersand.
APA 7th edition · 2019
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APA 7th edition · 2019 in one column.
Used by psychology, education, social-sciences, and most science departments. CitePlain emits the current edition by default. We never paywall it.
Required fields
- Author(s) — last name, initials
- Year of publication
- Title of work
- Publisher / journal
- DOI or URL
- Accessed date (URLs only)
Example output
Yeh, R. W., Valsdottir, L. R., Yeh, M. W., Shen, C., Kramer, D. B., Strom, J. B., Secemsky, E. A., Healy, J. L., Domeier, R. M., Kazi, D. S., & Nallamothu, B. K. (2018). Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: Randomized controlled trial. *BMJ*, 363, k5094. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k5094
Edition guide
Get the rules right.
APA 7 was published by the American Psychological Association in October 2019 and superseded APA 6. Most of the day-to-day formatting changes you will hit are in author lists, in-text citations, and DOI handling.
Quick rules
- 01Sentence case for article and chapter titles.
- 02Italics for journal, book, and report titles.
- 03DOIs formatted as a full https://doi.org/ link.
- 04Up to 20 authors before truncating with an ellipsis.
- 05Ampersand between final two authors in the reference list.
- 06Year in parentheses immediately after the author block.
In-text citations
Use the et al. shortening from the first citation when there are three or more authors. Always include the publication year in parentheses. For direct quotes, add a page number with p. or pp.; if there is no page number, use a paragraph or section label such as para. 4.
DOIs and URLs
Format every DOI as a clickable link in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxx. Drop the literal label DOI and any other prefix. URLs without a DOI also stay clickable. Retrieval dates are no longer required for stable web sources but remain useful for content that can change.
Journal articles
Italicise the journal title and volume number. The issue number goes in parentheses, immediately after the volume, with no space. Page range follows after a comma. Add the DOI as the final element.
Web sources
Use the publishing organisation as the publisher when no author is named, but never repeat the organisation if it is already the author. Capitalise titles using sentence case — only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon are capitalised.