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APA Citation Style: Welcome

This guide provides examples of references cited based on the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Most examples and all guidelines are extracted from the APA Publication Manual.

APA Style Guide

The American Psychological Association (APA) style guides and manuals below provide instructions and examples of how to create footnotes and bibliographies in research papers. Some include advice on grammar and punctuation, research methods, and guidelines on formatting the final paper.

Why Cite?

  • To acknowledge intellectual property of the original author
  • To provide support to arguments by referring to authoritative sources
  • To help readers verify your claims
  • To show research done

Where do you Cite?

Citation occurs in 2 areas in a written work.
  • In-text Citation : Providing basic information on your source of reference in your text itself. This is necessary when you are quoting, paraphrasing or summarizing from a source.
  • Reference List : Purpose is to help readers find the references used in your text.

Reference Manager Software

zotero icon    is a is a free bibliographic citation management software that:

  • allows you to save, collect, manage, cite, and share research sources.
  • works right in your browser, making it easy to save your citations while you search.
  • the Zotero word processor plugins easily enables you to cite your sources and create a bibliography while you work

       Go to Zotero guide

  is a software that:

  • stores and organizes citations found from many sources 
  • inserts these citations into a Word document 
  • automatically formats references according to a predefined citation style.

       Go to EndNote guide

Citation Generators

The following citation builders are freely available on the web. NUS Libraries, however, do not provide support for any of these tools.

What's New about APA 7th Edition?

Accessibility Guidelines Guidelines that support accessibility for all users, including simplified reference, in-text citation, and heading formats as well as additional font options.
Bias-Free Language    Guidelines                     New chapter on bias-free language guidelines for writing about people with respect and inclusivity in areas including age, disability, gender, participation in research, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. 
Best Practices The Publication Manual (7th ed.) has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect best practices in scholarly writing and publishing.
Ethics Expanded  Expanded guidance on ethical writing and publishing practices, including how to ensure the appropriate level of citation, avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism, and navigate the publication process
Journal Article Reporting Standards New chapter on journal article reporting standards that includes updates to reporting standards for quantitative research and the first-ever qualitative and mixed methods reporting standards in APA Style.
New Student Resources Resources for students on writing and formatting annotated bibliographies, response papers, and other paper types as well as guidelines on citing course materials.
New-User  Content Dedicated chapter for new users of APA Style covering paper elements and format, including sample papers for both professional authors and student writers.
100+ Reference Examples More than 100 new reference examples covering periodicals, books, audiovisual media, social media, webpages and websites, and legal resources.
40+ New Sample Tables and Figures More than 40 new sample tables and figures, including student-friendly examples such as a correlation table and a bar chart as well as examples that show how to reproduce a table or figure from another source.