Skip to Main Content

APA Style 7th Edition Resource Guide

A resource to help you with your APA citations.

APA Style Citation Basics

APA Style is a set of guidelines that govern all aspects of scholarly writing (APA is the acronym for the American Psychological Association). It was developed to help writers communicate in a clear and concise manner. Students use APA to document their sources ethically and appropriately. It is the most frequently used citation style at St. Kate's. 

  • APA requires that each work cited in the body of a paper must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper, and each entry on the reference list must be cited in the text (there are some exceptions).
  • An in-text citation within the body of the paper identifies a cited work by its author and year of publication. This enables readers to easily locate the corresponding entry in the reference list at the end of the paper.
  • The reference list provides the reader with all of the information they need to retrieve each work.
  • The author and date in the in-text citation must match the author and date in the reference entry.

How to Use This Guide

  • St. Kate's Librarians recommend using the APA Style website as your primary resource for everything related to APA, especially if you don't have access to the 7th edition manual. The website provides in-depth guidance for documenting sources, most of which is under the Style and Grammar Guidelines section.

  • Each page of this guide provides relevant links to the APA website about references, in-text citations, and formatting an APA paper.

  • St. Kate's Librarians have also created supplemental materials, including a quick APA guide and an online course.

Which St. Kate's Departments Use APA?

  • Business
  • Education
  • Fashion Design and Merchandising
  • Health Informatics
  • Holistic Health Studies
  • Library Science
  • Nursing
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Organizational Leadership
  • Public Health
  • Psychology
  • Social Work

For general undergraduate courses, APA is used at the discretion of the instructor.

©2024 St. Catherine University Library, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License