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APA Citation

This guide covers the basics of APA citation.

Books Quick Guide

Graphic outlining how to cite a book written by a single author

Are you citing a chapter out of a book? Please click here.

Overview

References for books contain four elements: author, date, book title, and publisher name. If the book has a DOI or a URL, you should include that as well. These elements can usually be found on the title page and/or the copyright page. Here is an example that contains all four elements:

This is how these four elements would look in a correctly formatted APA book citation:

example of correctly formatted APA book citation

 

The following sections provide more detail about each element.

Author

Type the name of the author in inverted (last name first) format.

  • Bosek, M.
  • Buck-Rolland, C.

If an article has 2-20 authors, provide all of the authors' names in inverted format, with an ampersand (&) before the last author's name.

  • Dillard-Wright, J., Walsh, J.H., & Brown, B.B.

Date

Type the copyright year of the book in parentheses, followed by a period and a space.

  • Laurent, J. (2019).

Title

Capitalize the first letter of the first word of the title. If there is a sub-title, which usually appears after a colon, capitalize the first letter of the first word in the sub-title. Format the entire title in italics. Type a period at the end.

If there is an edition number, add it after the last word in the title, but before the period, and place in parentheses. The edition number should not be in italics.

  • O'Meara, A. M. (2019). Maternity, newborn, and women's health nursing: A case based approach.

Capitalize all proper nouns, e.g. Vermont, if they are in the title regardless of their position.

Publisher

Type the name of the publisher exactly as you see it in the book, followed by a period. Do not include the publisher's location. Do not put the publisher's name in italics.

  • O'Meara, A. M. (2019). Maternity, newborn, and women's health nursing: A case based approach. Wolters Kluwer.