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APA Citation Generator

Build correctly formatted APA 7th edition references for websites, books, journals, and newspapers in seconds.

Privacy: your files never leave your device. All processing happens locally in your browser.

How to use

  1. 1.Select your source type: website, book, journal article, or newspaper article.
  2. 2.Enter the author names, publication date, title, and container (journal, publisher, newspaper, or site name), plus volume, issue, pages, DOI, or URL where applicable.
  3. 3.Copy the formatted APA 7th edition reference — italics and punctuation are applied automatically.

About APA Citation Generator

Generate accurate APA 7th edition reference list entries without memorizing every rule of the American Psychological Association's Publication Manual. Choose a source type — website, book, journal article, or newspaper article — fill in the fields, and this tool assembles a correctly punctuated, correctly italicized citation you can copy straight into your reference list.

The APA 7th edition was published in October 2019, replacing the 6th edition from 2010. It introduced several changes this generator follows automatically: publisher location is no longer included for books, up to 20 authors are now spelled out before an ellipsis is used (the 6th edition cut off at 7), the DOI is formatted as a full https://doi.org/ URL, and "Retrieved from" is only added when a page has no clear publication date and its content is likely to change.

Each source type has its own required elements, and the tool handles the differences for you. A journal article italicizes the journal name and volume number but not the article title; a book italicizes the whole title; a webpage italicizes an independent document title; and a newspaper italicizes the paper's name but not the headline. Getting these italics right by hand is one of the most common APA mistakes, so the generator marks them for you and shows the result inline.

Author handling follows APA 7 exactly. One author reads "Last, F. M." Two authors are joined with an ampersand. Three to twenty authors are separated by commas with an ampersand before the last name. Twenty-one or more authors list the first 19 names, then a spaced ellipsis, then the final author — with no ampersand. Leave the author fields blank for an unauthored source and the title automatically moves to the front of the entry. A missing year becomes "(n.d.)" for no date.

Keep in mind that a reference list entry (the full citation at the end of your paper) is different from an in-text citation (the short parenthetical like "(Grady et al., 2019)" that appears in the body). This tool builds the reference list entry — the longer, fully formatted version. Everything is computed locally in your browser using rules checked against the official examples at apastyle.apa.org, so nothing you type is ever uploaded.

Methodology & sources

Formatting follows the APA 7th edition (American Psychological Association, Publication Manual, 2019). Every rule — author ordering and ampersand/ellipsis handling, date formatting including (n.d.), italics per source type, DOI normalization to https://doi.org/, and the removal of publisher location for books — was implemented against the official reference examples at apastyle.apa.org and verified against those official published reference examples.

Frequently asked questions

Which edition of APA does this tool use?
It follows the APA 7th edition, published by the American Psychological Association in October 2019. This is the current standard for most college courses and psychology, education, and social science journals.
How does it handle sources with many authors?
For up to 20 authors, all names are listed with an ampersand before the last one. For 21 or more authors, APA 7 lists the first 19 names, adds a spaced ellipsis (. . .), and then adds the final author's name with no ampersand. The tool does this automatically.
Does this create in-text citations too?
No. This tool builds the full reference list entry that goes at the end of your paper. An in-text citation is the short parenthetical form, such as (Grady et al., 2019), that appears in the body of your text.

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