APA Citation Generator
Quickly create well-formatted APA citations with a citation generator built by writing experts.
Citation Information
APA Full Citation Preview
Add your citation information, and we'll format it here.
A Better Way to Work
Feel confident you've done your best work with the help of Grammarly. Benefit from:
Get all types of academic writing support at your fingertips, from automated citation generation to plagiarism detection to proofreading.
Simplify Citations and Improve Academic Writing
Grammarly makes it easy to build APA-format citations and helps ensure your entire paper is polished.
Get citations within seconds
Instantly get in-text and full APA citations with Grammarly’s auto-citations tool, which works within top source sites like Wikipedia, Frontiers, and ScienceDirect.
Never lose points over citation formatting
Perfect your citation's periods, parentheses, and more with the help of Grammarly's citation style formatting, which always stays up to date with the latest APA style guide.
Keep your writing original
Avoid accidental plagiarism. While you write, Grammarly identifies passages that may need references and shows you what the source may be.
Proofread with ease
With just a few clicks, clean up typos, subtle grammatical mistakes, and misplaced punctuation you might otherwise miss.
Trusted by Students and Educators at Over 3,000 Institutions, Including:
“Grammarly makes citations so easy and delightful. While working on my final dissertation, I saw a Grammarly pop-up on a research article just when I needed it. In one click, I got my citation. That's what you call the right feature at the right time!”
Sreekiran A.R.
M.Sc. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at University of Birmingham
A Short Guide to APA Format Citations
The APA citation format is typically used by researchers in sciences, social sciences, education, and engineering disciplines to document sources. Learn what APA format is, when to use APA-format citations, and how to create in-text and full APA citations for all sorts of sources below.
How to Create APA Format Citations
How to write a full APA citation
Full APA citations should be listed on your paper's references page, and their exact content varies depending on the source you're citing. A full APA YouTube video citation will look a bit different from an APA newspaper citation, which won’t be exactly the same as an APA photo citation, and so forth. That said, the APA citations on your references page will all follow the same general APA format. Here’s how that format looks:
The pieces of information you include depend on your source. For example, an APA citation for a book might look like this:
How to write an in-text APA citation
Like full citations, in-text APA citations vary depending on the source. However, they’re a bit simpler and include less information. To create an in-text APA citation for a source, you typically put the author’s last name, and the year the source was published in parentheses right after the reference. If you're quoting or directly referencing something, you'll also need to include the relevant page number(s) inside the parentheses. The citation’s contents will change a little depending on factors like multiple authors and if a source is audiovisual or online, but they'll all follow the same general format. Here’s how APA in-text citations would look for the full citation examples from above:
To learn more about how to cite APA for specific sources, check out the links in the section below.
APA Format Citations vs. Other Formats
For some assignments, you may be asked to use Chicago-style or MLA-format citations instead of APA-format citations. MLA format is used for the liberal arts and humanities fields, and Chicago style is typically used for history, business, and fine arts. Though these citation styles share similarities with APA, they have a slightly different approach to things like author names, dates, and title capitalization. This can be a bit confusing, but don’t worry! The free citation generator at the top of this page is here to save the day. Use it to quickly and accurately create citations in APA, Chicago, or MLA.
How to Cite (Almost) Anything in
APA Format
Have you ever wondered, "How do I cite a paper with multiple authors?" or "What are the rules for citing a journal article in APA?” Well, here's good news. Learning how to cite sources in APA format isn’t hard, and the articles below are here to help. Browse through them to see APA citation examples and get guidance on how to do a wide variety of APA citations.
Strong Writing, Proper Citations, Good Grades
96 percent of students say that Grammarly increases their confidence in their written material. Join them to give your writing—and your grades—that extra polish.