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Citing & Referencing: APA 7th Style

Title Information

APA requires you to only capitalize certain words in a title. You should capitalize the following:

  • The first word of the title
  • The first word of the subtitle, usually directly after a colon :
  • Any proper nouns (places, people, organizations, etc.)
  • All significant words in a journal/website title

Examples of Correct Capitalization:

  • Aces high: The heroic saga of the two top-scoring American aces of World War II
  • Can’t remember what I forgot: The good news from the front lines of memory research
  • The elements of library research: What every student needs to know
  • The FBI: A history

APA requires you to italicize the titles of stand-alone works:

  • books
  • journals
  • films
  • reports
  • webpages

If you are citing something that is part of a bigger work, you do not italicize the titles:

  • chapters in books
  • title of entry in a reference book
  • articles from journals, magazines, or newspapers

If a title ends with a non-period punctuation mark (such as a question mark or an exclamation mark), use that as the ending punctuation without adding a period.

Jacobs, J. B. (2002). Can gun control work? Oxford University Press.

Format Clarification

If the information you are citing is not a routine format, use square brackets after the title to clarify. Common examples include:

  • [Video]
  • [Tweet]
  • [App]
  • [Thesis]

Source: https://sfcollege.libguides.com/apa/components#:~:text=All%20APA%20reference%20list%20entries,date%2C%20title%2C%20and%20source.