how to use et al.'' in a research paper apa

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How to Use ‘‘et al.’’ in APA Style (7th Edition)

The term ‘‘et al.’’ is the abbreviated form of the Latin term ‘‘et alia,’’ which means ‘‘and others.’’ It is used in academic in-text citations when referring to a source with multiple authors. In APA style, for a source with three or more authors, list the first author’s last name and “et al.” for all citations, including the first citation.

The Term ‘‘et al.’’ is the Abbreviation of Latin Term ‘‘et elia,’’ Meaning ‘‘and others’’

The term ‘‘et al.’’ is the abbreviated form of the Latin term ‘‘ et alia,’’ which means ‘‘and others.’’ It is used in academic in-text citations when referring to a source with multiple authors. In APA style, for a source with three or more authors , list the first author’s last name and “et al.” for all citations, including the first citation. Note that this rule has changed from APA 6th edition guidelines on using ‘‘et al.’’  which recommend listing all author names in the first citation up to five authors but then using ‘‘et al.’’  for the second and subsequent citations.

In October 2019, the American Psychological Association (APA) introduced the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual, which replaces the 6th edition. The in-intext citation for works with three or more authors is now abbreviated right from the first citation. You only include the first author’s name and  “et al.”

For two authors: Always cite both authors' names in-text everytime you reference them.

Here is how this would look for a source authored by Parker, Robin, and Williams published in 2018.

( Parker et al., 2018)

            or

Parker et al. (2018) claimed that…

Note that there will be no comma between the surname and  ‘‘et al.’’  but a comma should be placed before the date in parentheses citation.  Also, the period goes only after the  ‘‘al.’’     even when it falls in the middle of a sentence.

The Correct Use of ‘‘et al.’’

Authors make several mistakes when using ‘‘et al.’’ in academic writings. The “al” in “et al.” is always followed by a period because the period shows that it is the abbreviated form of the term ‘‘et alia.’’

Thus, the following forms are not correct: ‘‘ et al’’, ‘‘et. al’’, ‘‘et. al.’’

The proper use of the abbreviation is ‘‘et al.’’

Also, “et al.” can be directly followed by another punctuation where necessary. However, the period always comes first:

(Parker et al., 2018)

When “et al.” is used right at the end of a sentence, only one period is used:

... by Parker et al. (2018)

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For more information about the citation styles and APA style, read the following articles:  

The 9 Most Important Changes in the 7th Edition of the APA Manual

APA Manual 7th Edition: In-Text Citation

How to Present Tables and Figures in APA Style (7th edition)

How to Use et al. in APA Style (7th Edition)?

APA Style: In-Text Citation | Reference List Entry

How to Cite Sources in APA Referencing Style? | With APA 7th Edition Update

How and When to Use ”et al.” in APA In-Text Citations?

Citation Styles | Which Citation Style Should I Use?

APA Formatting Guide for Academic Manuscripts

This handout discusses how and when to use et al. in APA style (7th edition). To give you an opportunity to practice your proofreading, we have left a few spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in the text. See if you can spot them! If you spot the errors correctly, you will be entitled to a 10% discount.

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / APA Format / When to use et al. in APA citation style

When to use et al. in APA citation style

APA citation style has a few quirks, and one of them is the use of the phrase “et al.,” which is short for the Latin term et alia , meaning, “and others.” We use the abbreviated “et al.” when citing a source with multiple authors. However, the 7 th edition of APA citation differs from previous versions in how “et al.” is applied.

Only use et al. in in-text citations

The abbreviation “et al.” is used only for in-text citations in the 7 th edition. This is a big change from the 6 th edition where it was also used in the reference list.

This means that references in APA 7 do NOT use the phrase “et al.”

In-text citation format with et al.

The phrase “et al.” is used with in-text citations (including APA parenthetical citations ) only when referencing a source that has three or more authors. Include the name of only the first author’s last name plus “et al.” in every citation.

In-text citation structure:

Text (1st Author et al., Year Published )

Text that mentions 1st Author et al. (Year Published)

In-text citation example:

The American Heart Association, in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health (Virani et al., 2020), annually report on the most up-to-date statistics related to heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular risk factors, including core health behaviors and health factors that contribute to cardiovascular health.

According to Virani et al. (2020), the American Heart Association, in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health, annually report on the most up-to-date statistics related to heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular risk factors, including core health behaviors and health factors that contribute to cardiovascular health.

The same rules apply for page numbers as with fewer authors, regardless of whether the citation is parenthetical or narrative.

Rare exception: Multiple works with the same authors

There are times when using “et al.” can cause more problems by muddying the waters. If multiple works have the same three or more authors and publication year, simply using “et al.” becomes confusing.

Since this is the case, when there is more than one source with the same three or more author surnames and date, it may be necessary to write out as many names as needed to distinguish the references, then “et al.” can be used for the remaining names for each citation throughout the text. If this doesn’t help to distinguish the sources, but the first initials are different, they can be used as well (T. Hanks et al.). As a last resort, a letter can accompany the year (2018a).

APA reference list entries for multiple authors

Per APA style, every in-text citation has a reference in the the reference list. Each reference contains source information to allow a reader to track down a source for additional reading, if desired.

In the reference list “et al.” is not used even if a work has more than three authors.

Sources with two authors list the last name and initials (First initial, and middle if available) of both authors. The names are divided by a comma and an ampersand (&). List the names in the order they are shown in the original source.

Author structure:

1st Last Name, F. M., & 2nd Last Name, F. M.

Example reference:

Handler, D., & Kalman, M. (2013). Why we broke up . Little, Brown and Company.

3 to 20 authors

Sources with 3 to 20 authors list the last name and initials of all authors. Each name is divided by a comma, and the last name is preceded by an ampersand (&). List each name in the order they are shown in the original source.

Author structure (f0r 3 authors, as an example):

1st Last Name, F. M., 2nd Last Name, F. M., & 3rd Last Name, F. M.

Hand, C., Ashton, B., & Meadows, J. (2016). My lady Jane . HarperCollins Publishers.

21 or more authors

Sources with 21 or more authors list the last name and initials of the first 19 names. After the 19th name, include an ellipsis and then the final name.

1st Last Name, F. M., 2nd Last Name, F. M., 3rd Last Name, F. M., 4th Last Name, F. M., 5th Last Name, F. M., 6th Last Name, F. M., 7th Last Name, F. M., 8th Last Name, F. M., 9th Last Name, F. M., 10th Last Name, F. M., 11th Last Name, F. M., 12th Last Name, F. M., 13th Last Name, F. M., 14th Last Name, F. M., 15th Last Name, F. M., 16th Last Name, F. M., 17th Last Name, F. M., 18th Last Name, F. M., 19th Last Name, F. M., . . . Final Last Name, F. M.

Virani, S. S., Alonso, A., Benjamin, E. J., Bittencourt, M. S., Callaway, C. W., Carson, A. P., Chamberlain, A. M., Chang, A. R., Cheng, S., Delling, F. N., Djousse, L., Elkind, M. S. V., Ferguson, J. F., Fornage, M., Khan, S. S., Kissela, B. M., Knutson, K. L., Kwan, T. W., Lackland, D. T., . . . Heard, D. G. (2020). Heart disease and stroke statistics—2020 update: A report from the American Heart Association. Circulation , E139–E596. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000757

The powers that be at the APA citation style believe this change will be a welcome one for authors, as it gives more of them credit for their contributions.

Published October 28, 2020.

APA Formatting Guide

APA Formatting

• Annotated Bibliography
• Block Quotes
• et al Usage
• In-text Citations
• Multiple Authors
• Paraphrasing
• Page Numbers
• Parenthetical Citations
• Reference Page
• Sample Paper
• APA 7 Updates
• View APA Guide

Citation Examples

• Book Chapter
• Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Website (no author)
• View all APA Examples

Do not use “et al.” in APA reference list entries. If the number of authors in the source is 20 or less, list all author names. If the number of authors is more than 20, list the first 19 author names followed by an ellipsis and then add the final author name. An example of the beginning of a reference entry having more than 20 authors is given below:

Author Surname1, F. M., Author Surname2, F. M., Author Surname3, F. M., Author Surname4, F. M., Author Surname5, F. M., Author Surname6, F. M., Author Surname7, F. M., Author Surname8, F. M., Author Surname9, F. M., Author Surname10, F. M., Author Surname11, F. M., Author Surname12, F. M., Author Surname13, F. M., Author Surname14, F. M., Author Surname15, F. M., Author Surname16, F. M., Author Surname17, F. M., Author Surname18, F. M., Author Surname19, F. M., . . . Last Author Surname, F. M. (Publication Year).

Alvarez, L. D., Peach, J. L., Rodriguez, J. F., Donald, L., Thomas, M., Aruck, A., Samy, K., Anthony, K., Ajey, M., Rodriguez, K. L., Katherine, K., Vincent, A., Pater, F., Somu, P., Pander, L., Berd, R., Fox, L., Anders, A., Kamala, W., . . . Jones, K. (2019).

Note that, unlike references with up to 20 author names, the “&” symbol is not used here before the last author name.

You can use “et al.” in in-text citations only when you reference a source with more than two authors as contributors. In such a case, you can add only the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”

First Author Surname et al. (Publication Year)

Thomas et al. (1921)

Parenthetical:

(First Author Surname et al., Publication Year)

(Thomas et al., 1921)

However, if you have many sources with the first two or more authors having the same surname with same publication year, using “et al.” will be confusing. In such cases, use as many author names as required to distinguish the references from one another and then use “et al.”

For example, if you have two sources with the same first author names, such as:

Aghion, R., Felix, J. F., Pitchai, M., & Ankit, N. (2005).

Aghion, R., Comin, L. F., Sivakumar, M., & Gilbert, N. (2005)

and if you would like to cite the second source, you need to follow the style mentioned below.

First Author Surname, Second Author Surname, et al. (Publication Year)

Aghion, Comin, et al. (2005)

(First Author Surname, Second Author Surname, et al., Publication Year)

(Aghion, Comin, et al., 2005)

For multiple publications with the first two or more authors having the same surname but with different initials for the first author, you can use the first author’s name and initials and et al. to distinguish the citations.

For example, the references

Aghion, P., Felix, J. F., Pitchai, M., & Ankit, N. (2005).

Aghion, R., Felix, L. F., Pitchai, M., & Ankit, N. (2005).

will be cited as

P. Aghion et al. (2005)

T. Aghion et al. (2005)

(P. Aghion et al., 2005)

(T. Aghion et al., 2005)

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Frequently asked questions

When should i use “et al.” in apa in-text citations.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (meaning “and others”) is used to shorten APA in-text citations with three or more authors . Here’s how it works:

Only include the first author’s last name, followed by “et al.”, a comma and the year of publication, for example (Taylor et al., 2018).

Frequently asked questions: APA Style

APA footnotes use superscript numbers and should appear in numerical order. You can place footnotes at the bottom of the relevant pages, or on a separate footnotes page at the end:

• For footnotes at the bottom of the page, you can use your word processor to automatically insert footnotes .
• For footnotes at the end of the text in APA, place them on a separate page entitled “Footnotes,” after the r eference page . Indent the first line of each footnote, and double-space them.

For both approaches, place a space between the superscript number and the footnote text.

APA Style requires you to use APA in-text citations , not footnotes, to cite sources .

However, you can use APA footnotes sparingly for two purposes:

• Giving additional information
• Providing copyright attribution

Yes, APA language guidelines state that you should always use the serial comma (aka Oxford comma ) in your writing.

This means including a comma before the word “and” at the end of a list of three or more items: “spelling, grammar, and punctuation.” Doing this consistently tends to make your lists less ambiguous.

Yes, it’s perfectly valid to write sentences in the passive voice . The APA language guidelines do caution against overusing the passive voice, because it can obscure your meaning or be needlessly long-winded. For this reason, default to the active voice in most cases.

The passive voice is most useful when the point of the sentence is just to state what was done, not to emphasize who did it. For example, “The projector was mounted on the wall” is better than “James and I mounted the projector on the wall” if it’s not particularly important who mounted the projector.

Yes, APA language guidelines encourage you to use the first-person pronouns “I” or “we” when referring to yourself or a group including yourself in your writing.

In APA Style, you should not refer to yourself in the third person. For example, do not refer to yourself as “the researcher” or “the author” but simply as “I” or “me.” Referring to yourself in the third person is still common practice in some academic fields, but APA Style rejects this convention.

If you cite several sources by the same author or group of authors, you’ll distinguish between them in your APA in-text citations using the year of publication.

If you cite multiple sources by the same author(s) at the same point , you can just write the author name(s) once and separate the different years with commas, e.g., (Smith, 2020, 2021).

To distinguish between sources with the same author(s) and  the same publication year, add a different lowercase letter after the year for each source, e.g., (Smith, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Add the same letters to the corresponding reference entries .

According to the APA guidelines, you should report enough detail on inferential statistics so that your readers understand your analyses.

Report the following for each hypothesis test:

• the test statistic value
• the degrees of freedom
• the exact p value (unless it is less than 0.001)
• the magnitude and direction of the effect

You should also present confidence intervals and estimates of effect sizes where relevant.

The number of decimal places to report depends on what you’re reporting. Generally, you should aim to round numbers while retaining precision. It’s best to present fewer decimal digits to aid easy understanding.

Use one decimal place for:

• Standard deviations
• Descriptive statistics based on discrete data

Use two decimal places for:

• Correlation coefficients
• Proportions
• Inferential test statistics such as t values, F values, and chi-squares.

No, including a URL is optional in APA Style reference entries for legal sources (e.g. court cases , laws ). It can be useful to do so to aid the reader in retrieving the source, but it’s not required, since the other information included should be enough to locate it.

Generally, you should identify a law in an APA reference entry by its location in the United States Code (U.S.C.).

But if the law is either spread across various sections of the code or not featured in the code at all, include the public law number in addition to information on the source you accessed the law in, e.g.:

You should report methods using the past tense , even if you haven’t completed your study at the time of writing. That’s because the methods section is intended to describe completed actions or research.

In your APA methods section , you should report detailed information on the participants, materials, and procedures used.

• Describe all relevant participant or subject characteristics, the sampling procedures used and the sample size and power .
• Define all primary and secondary measures and discuss the quality of measurements.
• Specify the data collection methods, the research design and data analysis strategy, including any steps taken to transform the data and statistical analyses.

With APA legal citations, it’s recommended to cite all the reporters (publications reporting cases) in which a court case appears. To cite multiple reporters, just separate them with commas in your reference entry . This is called parallel citation .

Don’t repeat the name of the case, court, or year; just list the volume, reporter, and page number for each citation. For example:

In APA Style , when you’re citing a recent court case that has not yet been reported in print and thus doesn’t have a specific page number, include a series of three underscores (___) where the page number would usually appear:

In APA style, statistics can be presented in the main text or as tables or figures . To decide how to present numbers, you can follow APA guidelines:

• To present three or fewer numbers, try a sentence,
• To present between 4 and 20 numbers, try a table,
• To present more than 20 numbers, try a figure.

Since these are general guidelines, use your own judgment and feedback from others for effective presentation of numbers.

In an APA results section , you should generally report the following:

• Participant flow and recruitment period.
• Missing data and any adverse events.
• Descriptive statistics about your samples.
• Inferential statistics , including confidence intervals and effect sizes.
• Results of any subgroup or exploratory analyses, if applicable.

When citing a podcast episode in APA Style , the podcast’s host is listed as author , accompanied by a label identifying their role, e.g. Glass, I. (Host).

When citing a whole podcast series, if different episodes have different hosts, list the executive producer(s) instead. Again, include a label identifying their role, e.g. Lechtenberg, S. (Producer).

Like most style guides , APA recommends listing the book of the Bible you’re citing in your APA in-text citation , in combination with chapter and verse numbers. For example:

Books of the Bible may be abbreviated to save space; a list of standard abbreviations can be found here . Page numbers are not used in Bible citations.

Yes, in the 7th edition of APA Style , versions of the Bible are treated much like other books ; you should include the edition you used in your reference list .

Previously, in the 6th edition of the APA manual, it was recommended to just use APA 6 in-text citations to refer to the Bible, and omit it from the reference list.

To make it easy for the reader to find the YouTube video , list the person or organization who uploaded the video as the author in your reference entry and APA in-text citation .

If this isn’t the same person responsible for the content of the video, you might want to make this clear in the text. For example:

When you need to highlight a specific moment in a video or audio source, use a timestamp in your APA in-text citation . Just include the timestamp from the start of the part you’re citing. For example:

To include a direct quote in APA , follow these rules:

• Quotes under 40 words are placed in double quotation marks .
• Quotes of 40 words or more are formatted as block quote .
• The author, year, and page number are included in an APA in-text citation .

APA doesn’t require you to include a list of tables or a list of figures . However, it is advisable to do so if your text is long enough to feature a table of contents and it includes a lot of tables and/or figures .

A list of tables and list of figures appear (in that order) after your table of contents, and are presented in a similar way.

Copyright information can usually be found wherever the table or figure was published. For example, for a diagram in a journal article , look on the journal’s website or the database where you found the article. Images found on sites like Flickr are listed with clear copyright information.

If you find that permission is required to reproduce the material, be sure to contact the author or publisher and ask for it.

If you adapt or reproduce a table or figure from another source, you should include that source in your APA reference list . You should also include copyright information in the note for the table or figure, and include an APA in-text citation when you refer to it.

Tables and figures you created yourself, based on your own data, are not included in the reference list.

An APA in-text citation is placed before the final punctuation mark in a sentence.

• The company invested over 40,000 hours in optimizing its algorithm (Davis, 2011) .
• A recent poll suggests that EU membership “would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters” in a referendum (Levring, 2018) .

In an APA in-text citation , you use the phrase “ as cited in ” if you want to cite a source indirectly (i.e., if you cannot find the original source).

Parenthetical citation: (Brown, 1829, as cited in Mahone, 2018) Narrative citation: Brown (1829, as cited in Mahone, 2018) states that…

On the reference page , you only include the secondary source (Mahone, 2018).

Popular word processors like Microsoft Word and Google Docs can order lists in alphabetical order, but they don’t follow the APA Style alphabetization guidelines .

If you use Scribbr’s APA Citation Generator to create citations, references are ordered automatically based on the APA guidelines, taking into account all the exceptions.

Order numerals as though they were spelled out:

• “20 tips to relax” is ordered on the “T” of “Twenty”.
• “100 cities you should visit” is ordered on the “O” of “One hundred”.

Read more about alphabetizing the APA reference page .

If the author of a work is unknown, order the reference by its title. Disregard the words “A”, “An”, and “The” at the beginning of the title.

• The privacy concerns around social media
• Teens, social media, and privacy

Yes, if relevant you can and should include APA in-text citations in your appendices . Use author-date citations as you do in the main text.

Any sources cited in your appendices should appear in your reference list . Do not create a separate reference list for your appendices.

When you include more than one appendix in an APA Style paper , they should be labeled “Appendix A,” “Appendix B,” and so on.

When you only include a single appendix, it is simply called “Appendix” and referred to as such in the main text.

Appendices in an APA Style paper appear right at the end, after the reference list and after your tables and figures if you’ve also included these at the end.

An appendix contains information that supplements the reader’s understanding of your research but is not essential to it. For example:

• Interview transcripts
• Questionnaires
• Detailed descriptions of equipment

Something is only worth including as an appendix if you refer to information from it at some point in the text (e.g. quoting from an interview transcript). If you don’t, it should probably be removed.

If you adapt or reproduce a table or figure from another source, you should include that source in your APA reference list . You should also acknowledge the original source in the note or caption for the table or figure.

APA doesn’t require you to include a list of tables or a list of figures . However, it is advisable to do so if your text is long enough to feature a table of contents and it includes a lot of tables and/or figures.

A list of tables and list of figures appear (in that order) after your table of contents , and are presented in a similar way.

In an APA Style paper , use a table or figure when it’s a clearer way to present important data than describing it in your main text. This is often the case when you need to communicate a large amount of information.

Before including a table or figure in your text, always reflect on whether it’s useful to your readers’ understanding:

• Could this information be quickly summarized in the text instead?
• Is it important to your arguments?
• Does the table or figure require too much explanation to be efficient?

If the data you need to present only contains a few relevant numbers, try summarizing it in the text (potentially including full data in an appendix ). If describing the data makes your text overly long and difficult to read, a table or figure may be the best option.

In an APA Style paper , the abstract is placed on a separate page after the title page (page 2).

An APA abstract is around 150–250 words long. However, always check your target journal’s guidelines and don’t exceed the specified word count.

In APA Style , all sources that are not retrievable for the reader are cited as personal communications . In other words, if your source is private or inaccessible to the audience of your paper , it’s a personal communication.

Common examples include conversations, emails, messages, letters, and unrecorded interviews or performances.

Interviews you conducted yourself are not included in your reference list , but instead cited in the text as personal communications .

Published or recorded interviews are included in the reference list. Cite them in the usual format of the source type (for example, a newspaper article , website or YouTube video ).

To cite a public post from social media , use the first 20 words of the post as a title, include the date it was posted and a URL, and mention the author’s username if they have one:

Dorsey, J. [@jack]. (2018, March 1). We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/jack/status/969234275420655616

To cite content from social media that is not publicly accessible (e.g. direct messages, posts from private groups or user profiles), cite it as a personal communication in the text, but do not include it in the reference list :

When contacted online, the minister stated that the project was proceeding “according to plan” (R. James, Twitter direct message, March 25, 2017).

When you quote or paraphrase a specific passage from a source, you need to indicate the location of the passage in your APA in-text citation . If there are no page numbers (e.g. when citing a website ) but the text is long, you can instead use section headings, paragraph numbers, or a combination of the two:

(Caulfield, 2019, Linking section, para. 1).

Section headings can be shortened if necessary. Kindle location numbers should not be used in ebook citations , as they are unreliable.

If you are referring to the source as a whole, it’s not necessary to include a page number or other marker.

When no individual author name is listed, but the source can clearly be attributed to a specific organization—e.g., a press release by a charity, a report by an agency, or a page from a company’s website—use the organization’s name as the author in the reference entry and APA in-text citations .

When no author at all can be determined—e.g. a collaboratively edited wiki or an online article published anonymously—use the title in place of the author. In the in-text citation, put the title in quotation marks if it appears in plain text in the reference list, and in italics if it appears in italics in the reference list. Shorten it if necessary.

APA Style usually does not require an access date. You never need to include one when citing journal articles , e-books , or other stable online sources.

However, if you are citing a website or online article that’s designed to change over time, it’s a good idea to include an access date. In this case, write it in the following format at the end of the reference: Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/about-the-university/about-the-university.html

The 7th edition APA Manual , published in October 2019, is the most current edition. However, the 6th edition, published in 2009, is still used by many universities and journals.

The APA Manual 7th edition can be purchased at Amazon as a hardcover, paperback or spiral-bound version. You can also buy an ebook version at RedShelf .

The American Psychological Association anticipates that most people will start using the 7th edition in the spring of 2020 or thereafter.

It’s best to ask your supervisor or check the website of the journal you want to publish in to see which APA guidelines you should follow.

If you’re citing from an edition other than the first (e.g. a 2nd edition or revised edition), the edition appears in the reference, abbreviated in parentheses after the book’s title (e.g. 2nd ed. or Rev. ed.).

In the 7th edition of the APA manual, no location information is required for publishers. The 6th edition previously required you to include the city and state where the publisher was located, but this is no longer the case.

In an APA reference list , journal article citations include only the year of publication, not the exact date, month, or season.

The inclusion of volume and issue numbers makes a more specific date unnecessary.

In an APA journal citation , if a DOI (digital object identifier) is available for an article, always include it.

If an article has no DOI, and you accessed it through a database or in print, just omit the DOI.

If an article has no DOI, and you accessed it through a website other than a database (for example, the journal’s own website), include a URL linking to the article.

You may include up to 20 authors in a reference list entry .

When an article has more than 20 authors, replace the names prior to the final listed author with an ellipsis, but do not omit the final author:

Davis, Y., Smith, J., Caulfield, F., Pullman, H., Carlisle, J., Donahue, S. D., James, F., O’Donnell, K., Singh, J., Johnson, L., Streefkerk, R., McCombes, S., Corrieri, L., Valck, X., Baldwin, F. M., Lorde, J., Wardell, K., Lao, W., Yang, P., . . . O’Brien, T. (2012).

Include the DOI at the very end of the APA reference entry . If you’re using the 6th edition APA guidelines, the DOI is preceded by the label “doi:”. In the 7th edition , the DOI is preceded by ‘https://doi.org/’.

• 6th edition: doi: 10.1177/0894439316660340
• 7th edition: https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0894439316660340

APA citation example (7th edition)

Hawi, N. S., & Samaha, M. (2016). The relations among social media addiction, self-esteem, and life satisfaction in university students. Social Science Computer Review , 35 (5), 576–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439316660340

When citing a webpage or online article , the APA in-text citation consists of the author’s last name and year of publication. For example: (Worland & Williams, 2015). Note that the author can also be an organization. For example: (American Psychological Association, 2019).

If you’re quoting you should also include a locator. Since web pages don’t have page numbers, you can use one of the following options:

• Paragraph number: (Smith, 2018, para. 15).
• Heading or section name: ( CDC, 2020, Flu Season section)
• Abbreviated heading:  ( CDC, 2020, “Key Facts” section)

Always include page numbers in the APA in-text citation when quoting a source . Don’t include page numbers when referring to a work as a whole – for example, an entire book or journal article.

If your source does not have page numbers, you can use an alternative locator such as a timestamp, chapter heading or paragraph number.

Instead of the author’s name, include the first few words of the work’s title in the in-text citation. Enclose the title in double quotation marks when citing an article, web page or book chapter. Italicize the title of periodicals, books, and reports.

No publication date

If the publication date is unknown , use “n.d.” (no date) instead. For example: (Johnson, n.d.).

APA Style papers should be written in a font that is legible and widely accessible. For example:

• Times New Roman (12pt.)
• Arial (11pt.)
• Calibri (11pt.)
• Georgia (11pt.)

The same font and font size is used throughout the document, including the running head , page numbers, headings , and the reference page . Text in footnotes and figure images may be smaller and use single line spacing.

The easiest way to set up APA format in Word is to download Scribbr’s free APA format template for student papers or professional papers.

Alternatively, you can watch Scribbr’s 5-minute step-by-step tutorial or check out our APA format guide with examples.

You need an APA in-text citation and reference entry . Each source type has its own format; for example, a webpage citation is different from a book citation .

Use Scribbr’s free APA Citation Generator to generate flawless citations in seconds or take a look at our APA citation examples .

APA format is widely used by professionals, researchers, and students in the social and behavioral sciences, including fields like education, psychology, and business.

Be sure to check the guidelines of your university or the journal you want to be published in to double-check which style you should be using.

Yes, page numbers are included on all pages, including the title page , table of contents , and reference page . Page numbers should be right-aligned in the page header.

To insert page numbers in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, click ‘Insert’ and then ‘Page number’.

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Capstone Form and Style

Citations: using et al., using et al..

In APA 7, when citing a work with three or more authors, include the first author’s surname followed by “et al.” "Et al." is Latin for "and others." Do this every time you cite the source, including the first instance. For example, a parenthetical citation for a work by three authors (Rasmussen, Hopkins, and Fitzpatrick) with a publication date of 2004 would look like this:

In research-based development planning, decision-making is based on careful, systematic examination of goals, data, and results (Rasmussen et al., 2004).

A narrative citation would look like this:

Rasmussen et al. (2004) emphasized the vital role research plays in development planning, saying that thoughtful examination of data and evidence should be present.

Remember that there will not be a comma between the surname and “et al.,” and the period goes only after the “al.” The English translation of “et al.” is simply “and others.”

When citing a work by two authors, always include both authors’ names. Do not use “et al.”

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