Westfield
State College Ely Library
Citing Web Pages in APA
Style
This guide summarizes the APA guidelines for citing web pages. It is based on
the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed.
For more information and examples of citations, please consult the Publication
manual of the American Psychological Association that is available in Ely Library's
reference collection (REF BF76.7 .P83 2001). For examples of how to cite other
types of sources in APA Style, consult the separate webpage APA
Style - How to Document Information.
NOTE: This is a guide on how to cite freely accessible web pages that
are not accessed through periodical databases. If you need
to create citations for articles from library databases, see the webpage APA
Style - Citing Library Database Articles in APA Style.
Citing Web Pages in a list of References
Basic Format:
Author. (Publication Date). Web page title. Retrieved
Month day, year, from URL
Elements:
- Author: Usually found at the top or bottom of the web page.
Look for: Author, Compiler/Compiled by, Maintainer/Maintained by.
If author is not available, begin your citation with the web page title.
- Publication Date: Usually found at the end of the document.
Use the last update if available. Use the copyright date if available.
If the month and day are given, include them. If a publication date
is not available, use n.d. (no date).
- Web Page Title: Give the title of the web page here.
If you are citing a specific article within a larger web site, give the title
of the article and the name of the larger web site.
- Retrieved date: the day, month and year that you originally accessed
the page.
- URL: "Uniform Resource Locator" is the web address of your
document. It is found at the top right corner of your printout or in
the "Location" bar on your web browser. Take care in transcribing the
URL. Copying and pasting is recommended. Whenever possible, the
URL should take the reader directly to the document you are citing.
If this is not possible, the URL should take the reader as close to the document
as possible.
Examples:
Web page authored by an organization. n.d. indicates that no
publication date is available.
United States Sentencing Commission (n.d.). 1997 Sourcebook of federal sentencing
statistics.
Retrieved December 8, 1999, from http://www.ussc.gov/annrpt/1997/sbtoc97.htm
Web page without an author. The long URL is broken after a
slash.
GVU's 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000,
from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/
gvu/users_surveys/survey-1997-10/
Web page is a journal article from an Internet-only journal.
The journal title, issue and article number are identified. Article
title is not italicized. Journal title is italicized.
Fredrickson, B.L. (2000, March 7). Cultivating positive emotions to
optimize health and well-being.
Prevention & Treatment, 3, Article
0001a. Retrieved November 20, 2000, from http://
journals.apa.org/prevention/volume3/pre0030001a.html
Web page is a document contained within a large Web site. The
host organization is identified and followed by a colon.
Chou, L., McClintock, R., Moretti, F. & Nix, D.H. (1993). Technology
and education: New wine in
new bottles: Choosing pasts and imagining
educational futures. Retrieved August 24, 2000, from
Columbia University, Institute for Learning
Technologies Web site: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/
publications/papers/newwine1.html
For more details and examples, see Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association located in reference. Call number: REF BF 76.7 2001
p. 268-278.
Citing Web Pages in Text
Direct quotes, references to another person's ideas, and paraphrases of someone
else's writing must be identified by citations in the text of your paper. (For
detailed information on giving credit to your sources, see the
guide to avoiding plagiarism produced by the Writing Tutorial Services
of Indiana University.) Your citation enables your reader to identify the source
of information in the Reference List at the end of your paper.
Use the (author, date) method of citation, and insert the author and date into
the text at appropriate points. Reference citations in the text of your paper
direct your reader to the full entry in the list of References.
Basic Format:
(Author, year, page number if applicable)
- Citation includes author's name, year of publication,
then page numbers if available.
- If your source lacks an author, cite the first one or two words of the title.
- If no date is given, place "n.d." after the author’s name.
- note on page numbers: Web documents often don't have page numbers. When
a web page lacks numbering, omit page numbers from your parenthetical references. Do
not use page numbers generated on a print-out of the web document. PDF files
found on the web will have page numbers however that can be used in a citation.
Examples:
Author's name and date are cited, and no page number is available
While we think of emotion as linked to action, "the changes sparked by contentment are more cognitive than physical" (Fredrickson, 2000).
Author is organization, n.d is used for no date, and no page number is available:
Adolescents who participate in regular family meals are better equipped to meet
the challenges of growing up in today's society (Greater New Milford Area Health
Community Task Force on Teen and Adolescent Issues, n.d.).
Four authors, the date is known. The web document is a PDF file, so page
numbers can be cited.
As a mature and committed professional, the teacher works within "the specific
segment of the curricular pie for which he is responsible" (Chou, McClintock,
Moretti, Nix, 1993, p. 2).
No author, date unknown, no page number is available:
Older statistics show this trend by gender ("GVU's 8th," n.d.)
Developed from:
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication
manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.).
Washington,
DC : American Psychological Association.
Last updated August 13, 2007
