Locate the following information from your journal article: author or authors, the year the article was published, title of the article, title of the journal, volume and issue number of the journal, and the page numbers of the article you wish to cite. This information is available on the first page of the article in most cases or in the citation used in most online research databases.
Type the last name of the author first followed by initials for the first and middle name. For articles with two authors, use last names followed by initials in both cases separating the two names using an ampersand instead of the word "and." For three to seven authors, maintain the last name followed by initials format separating each author with a comma, but use an ampersand before the last author's name. For articles with eight or more authors, include the first six authors (last name, initials) followed by an ellipsis (. . .) and the last author's name. Place a period after the last author's name.
Insert the date of the publication, placing it inside parentheses followed by a period.
Type the title of the journal article followed by a period.
Type the title of the journal in italics followed by a comma. After the comma, type the volume number of the journal. For journals paginated by volume, place a comma after the volume number followed by the range of pages of the article. For journals paginated by issue, place the issue number in parentheses immediately following the volume number. Use a comma after the issue number followed by the page numbers of the article. In both cases complete the citation with a period. See the two examples below.
Snow, A. B., Johnson, B. C., & Jones, D. H. (2008). How to cite sources in APA format. The Journal of Modern English (in italics), 55, 350-357.
Snow, A. B., Johnson, B. C., & Jones, D. H. (2008). How to cite sources in APA format. The Journal of Modern English (in italics), 55(2), 350-357.
Use APA's author-date system to cite journal articles inside the text of your paper.
For articles with two authors, include the last name of each author separated by an ampersand followed by year in parentheses.
(Johnson & Jones, 1999).
You can also cite two authors in-text as follows.
Johnson and Jones (1999) found that sea otters...
For articles with three to five authors, list all of the authors' names either in parentheses or as part of the text the first time you cite them. Subsequently, use only the first author's name followed by et al.
(Johnson et al., 1999)
For articles with six or more authors, use only the first author's name followed by parentheses each time you cite the article, including the first time.