The shape of an APA 7 reference
Every APA reference answers four questions in order, each part ending in a full stop: who wrote it, when, what it is called and where to find it. Authors are last names with initials, with an ampersand before the last, and the year sits in brackets after them. A book by two authors: Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow. Since the 7th edition the publisher's city is left out, so APA ignores the City box.
Articles, web pages and videos
A journal article keeps its own title plain and puts the journal name and volume in italics, the issue in brackets and the pages after them: Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2004). Sleep-dependent learning and memory consolidation. Neuron, 44(1), 121–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.08.031 (APA puts no full stop after a link). A web page or a video gets the full date, as in (2023, December 4), and a video has [Video] after its title. When an organisation wrote the page and also runs the site, the site name is not repeated, and a source with no date shows (n.d.).
Sentence case for titles
APA writes the titles of books, articles, pages and videos in sentence case: a capital only on the first word, the first word after a colon, and names. Journal names keep their capitals, as in Journal of Sleep Research. The generator keeps your capitals exactly as typed, so type the title in sentence case, or fix it after pasting.
Questions
How do I cite it in the text?
With the author and year: (Levitt & Dubner, 2005) in brackets, or Levitt and Dubner (2005) in a sentence. Three or more authors are shortened to the first and et al. from the first mention, as in (Smith et al., 2021), and a quotation adds its page: (Levitt & Dubner, 2005, p. 89). This page writes the reference list entry; the in-text part comes from its first words.
Does APA 7 need a retrieval date?
Only for a page that is meant to change and is not archived, such as a live map or a social media profile, where APA adds Retrieved October 14, 2026, from before the URL. This page leaves the date out, as APA does for an ordinary article or page, so add the phrase by hand in the rare case you need it.
What changed from APA 6?
The 7th edition (2019) dropped the publisher's city and the words Retrieved from before most links, writes a DOI as an https://doi.org/ link, and lists up to 20 authors before shortening, where APA 6 stopped at seven. Everything on this page follows the 7th edition.