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APA Quick Citation Guide

This guide contains examples of common citation formats in APA (American Psychological Association) Style

Web Pages

If you are citing an entire website, it is not necessary to include a citation for the website in your reference list. Simply include the title and address within the text of your paper.

Example:
The Safe Child website includes practical information for parents on how to help their children cope with bullying (http://safechild.org).

When citing specific information from individual web pages, use the following elements to create your citation. For more information on creating citations when some of the elements are missing, see the APA Style Blog post on Missing Pieces.

Note: Citations with more than one line of text should have a hanging indent of 1/2 inch or 5 spaces.

Important Elements

  • Author (if known). If no author, use title
  • Date of publication. If no date, use n.d.
  • Title of Web page
  • URL (Web address) of the Web page

Note on titles: only italicize the title of a document that stands alone (books, reports, etc.), but not the title of a document that is part of a greater whole. If you are not sure whether something stands alone (such as a document on a website), choose not to italicize.

Web page with author

Kraizer, S. (2011). Safety on the Internet. Retrieved from http://safechild.org/categoryparents/safety-on-the-internet/

Web page with group author

American Cancer Society. (2015). Genetics and cancer. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/geneticsandcancer/index

Web page with no author

Claustrophobia. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/claustrophobia/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Social Media

For more information on citing social media such as Facebook and Twitter, see the APA Style blog post on How to Cite Social Media.

Blog Post:

McAdoo, T. (2014, February 4). How to cite a hashtag in #APA Style [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/social-media/

YouTube Video:

Clarkson, R.G. (2009, July 20). [RobertGClarkson]. Claustrophobia: 7 quick tactics to stop the panic [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jOXKzwM-Ns

Howcast. (2019, October 29). How to recognize claustrophoba symptoms [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5QL3ksAPA
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