APA Format

The APA format is a writing style that originated in 1929 as a system of uniform guidelines to make scientific writing easier for reading comprehension. APA stands for American Psychological Association, and it was a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers who agreed upon this new standard. Since then, APA has been updated a great deal, and has been used by researchers, students, and educators across many disciplines, including healthcare and the humanities.

Using the APA format provides a consistency for readers that allows them focus on the content being presented, rather than being distracted by the formatting, inconsistent use of punctuation, or presentation of statistics. It allows readers to find key ideas and points quickly and provides an easier reference for sources. And for writers, the APA Style provides guidance on all aspects of scientific writing, references, and textbook citation so that they can focus entirely on presentation of their ideas.

The APA Style is most often used for texts that are intended for publication in scholarly journals or student papers in college and post-graduate programs. While the format is intended to provide guidelines for consistency and as a result does not change too often, the APA will update the format to adjust for new forms of publication (for example, for e-books, which is a relatively new type of publication method) and most recently updated the APA Style to adjust for more inclusive and bias-free language.

An APA-formatted paper must include not only in-text citations in the body of the work; it must also contain a reference page at the end that lists all citations, including books, textbooks, or other sources that were used as a source.

How To Cite a Book in APA

In any scholarly piece of writing, it is vital to cite sources and acknowledge the work of others that were used.

When citing a book in APA in the list of references at the end of a scholarly work, a real-world example would look like the following.

• Snyder, T. (2015). Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning. Tim Duggan Books.

APA format citation will always start with the author’s last name, followed by the first initial and a middle initial if there is one. The date of publication is next and is in parentheses. The title of book and subtitle are italicized, and the first letter of the title and the subtitle will be capitalized. Note that proper nouns are always capitalized (Boston Red Sox, Mexico, Sara, the Holocaust) but the rest of the title is not. The final piece of the citation is the name of the publisher.

Another real world example of a book citation follows.

• Snow, S. (2008). Blessed days of anaesthesia: How anaesthetics changed the world. Oxford University Press.

It should be noted that in previous editions of APA Style, it was a requirement to include the location of the publisher so that the citation would look like the following:

• Author’s Last Name, First Initial. (Year of publication). Title of Work: Subtitle goes here. Location: Publisher. As of the seventh edition of APA, the location is no longer required.

APA Textbook Citation

Textbook citations for APA Style only differ slightly from the book citations mentioned above. A textbook may have multiple authors, or no author at all, and citing it requires adding the edition if there have been multiple editions. As with the regular book citation, a textbook citation does not follow typical title case for capitalization; only the first word in the title and subtitle, along with proper nouns, are capitalized.

An example of a citation for a textbook with one author:

• Mauseth, J. D. (2019). Botany: An introduction to plant biology (7th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

A textbook with multiple authors still gives the last name and initials of all authors, with an ampersand sign (&) preceding the last listed author. Example:

• Mack, A. H., Brady, K.T., Miller, S.I., & Frances, R.J. (2016). Clinical textbook of addictive disorders (4th ed.). The Guildford Press.

A textbook with no author will cite the editor or editors in place of the author, using the same last name, first initial, and middle initial format. In this case it must be noted that this is the editor and not an author with the use of (Ed.) for one editor or (Eds.) for multiple editors. An example:

• Mooren, F. C. (Ed.). 2012. Encyclopedia of exercise medicine in health and disease. Springer Press.

APA Format for E-books

The format for citing e-books in APA Style is the same as books and textbooks noted above, with one small addition. Electronic works will typically include a DOI (digital object identifier), which is a unique alphanumeric code assigned to every article, book, or other publication. The DOI allows readers to find the source online. The DOI may or may not be a URL, but if there is a URL, that should be included. In some cases, there may not be a URL, or at least a functional one, since objects on the internet often move and URLs can become dead links. In that case, a DOI may simply be the alphanumeric code preceded by http://doi.org/.

An e-book or article may have a stated author or it may have been authored and released by an organization. In the case of an online article, the publisher is replaced by the name of the website hosting the piece. An article or other online resource should include the year, month, and day of its posting/publication.

Example of an e-book citation:

• Wilde, O. (1895). The importance of being earnest. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/844

For an article that has a listed author:

• Wilson, F. P. (2022, April 6). Fracking linked to congenital abnormalities. Medium. https://fperrywilson.medium.com/fracking-linked-to-congenital-abnormalities-dfc5a9bc1bb2

For an article that has no author, the name of the organization should be used and also include the full date of publication if it is available:

• American Civil Liberties Union. (2022, April 11). 10 books politicians don’t want you to read. ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/10-books-politicians-dont-want-you-to-read

APA Citation for Editions

As noted in the section on textbook citation, books with multiple editions must include the specific edition that is being referenced. If a work has multiple volumes, that must also be noted. An example of this would be:

• Papadakos, P. & Gestring, M. (Eds.). (2015). Encyclopedia of trauma care (1st ed., Vol. 1). Springer Press.

APA In-Text Citations

Within the text of a work, parenthetical citation also needs to be provided, which only includes the author’s last name and the publication date. If a source is cited in the text, then it must also appear in the list of references at the end of the paper.

Using some of the example books mentioned in the book section, in-text citation of a source that is referred to but not directly quoted would look like:

• (Snyder, 2015)

If the referenced work has two authors, the citation would use both last names separated by an ampersand symbol (&) and the year. For example:

• (Mack & Brady, 2016)

If a referenced work has three or more authors, only the first author’s name followed by “et al.” should be listed. As an example:

• (Mack et al., 2016)

If another work is being directly quoted, the page number or numbers for the quote should be included. It would look like:

• (Snyder, 2015, p. 145)
• (Snow, 2008, pp. 130-131)

In some cases, referencing a text may be in the form of a summary or paraphrasing rather than a direct quote. In this instance only the author and year of publication would be cited. However, for longer works the pages may be cited so that a reader can easily find the information being referenced.

For online textbooks or e-book citations, the same format of the author’s last name and publication date should be used. If there is no author the organization or publisher’s name is used instead. Example:

• (Russell, 2018)
• (American Psychological Association, 2019)

Links to the online resource do not need to be provided in the in-text citation, but the URL or DOI will be needed for the reference page.

APA Book Citation Examples

Lesson Summary

Originally created by a group of psychologists and business managers as a writing standard in 1929, the APA format is widely used today across many disciplines. It provides a consistent format that makes it easier for readers to focus on the content without distractions, while still providing proper citation of other works. Use of the APA Style also provides writers with an established and easy-to-follow guide on scholarly writing so that they can stay focused on presenting their ideas. Today, the system is used primarily for scholarly journals and for college projects. Since its inception in 1929, APA Style has undergone some changes, most recently being updated to reflect modern forms of publication such as e-books and use of inclusive language.

Citing a book in APA Style is not complicated. It should be noted that there is a unique detail when formatting the title in a citation, as APA does not follow title case for capitalization. Only the first word in the title and subtitle, as well as proper nouns, are capitalized in APA Style. The simplest form of in-text textbook citation requires citing the last name of an author and the year of the reference work’s publication, but for the reference page at the end of a work the title, edition, volume, and publisher must all be noted. When there is no author for a source, the editor is listed instead and this is indicated in the citation with the addition of (Ed.) or (Eds.) placed after the editor’s last name and first initial. When a text has two authors and needs to be cited in text, the last names of both authors, followed by a comma and the publication year, are used; for example: (Mack & Brady, 2016). While there are multiple variations for citing works, many of which have been covered in this lesson, at its simplest, the APA format citation of a book or textbook can be summarized as the following:

• Author’s Last Name, First Initial. (Year of publication). Title of work: Subtitle goes here. Publisher.

A real example of a book citation would look like this:

• Snyder, T. (2015). Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning. Tim Duggan Books.