APA Citation

Are you citing an entire website?

• Do not create a reference for it or an in-text citation
• Include the name of the website in the text and provide the URL in parenteses
• E.g. I searched the CDC website (https://www.cdc.gov/) for information about health disparities.

References for websites ideally contain five elements: author, date, title, title of the website, and URL. Some of these elements may be missing, however, because website design isn't standardized. It can be hard to find all of these elements on a website as well, so you may have to look in several places. Here is an example that contains all five elements:

This is how these five elements would look in a correctly formatted APA website citation:

The following sections provide more detail about each element.

Type the name of the author in inverted (last name first) format. Place a period at the end.

• Bosek, M.
• Buck-Rolland, C.

Many websites do not have a person listed as the author of the page so use the name of the group instead:

• Centers for Disease Control
• World Health Organization

When the author name and the site name are the same, omit the site name from the source section.

Be sure to check other parts of the website, such as the "About Us" page for clues as to the name of the author.

Provide the most specific date possible e.g. year, month, & day or just the year. This may be the "last updated" date. Place inside parentheses and end with a period.

• Centers for Disease Control. (2020).

DO NOT use the copyright date. If there is no date, use the letters (n.d.) for no date:

• World Health Organization. (n.d.).

Only include a retrieval date if the information is designed to change over time and the page you are citing is not archived.

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. Type a period at the end.

Put the title into italics and do not put quotation marks around it.

• Artiga, S. Orgera, K., & Pham, O. (2020, April 1). Disparities in health and health care: Five key questions and answers.

Enter the name of the entire website:

• Artiga, S. Orgera, K., & Pham, O. (2020, April 1). Disparities in health and health care: Five key questions and answers. KFF.

If the author name and the title of the website are the same, put the name in the author position and omit the title of the website. Place a period at the end of the section:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, June 24). Childhood obesity facts. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html

Enter the exact URL for the page being cited. Do not use the URL for the overall website:

• Artiga, S. Orgera, K., & Pham, O. (2020,April 1). Disparities in health and health care: Five key questions and answers. KFF. https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-five-key-questions-and-answers/

Do not place in italics. Do not put a period or any other punctuation at the end of the URL.

Do not use the word "Retrieved" before the URL, unless the content is designed to change over time, such as the homepage of a newspaper website, and the page is not archived.