Do I abbreviate the group author in the APA reference list?

No. The Alamo reprint of APA 7 is explicit: spell out the full name, then a period. National Institute of Mental Health. is correct. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). and NIMH. are both wrong. Abbreviations are an in-text convenience, introduced in square brackets in the first citation and used alone afterward.

When should I introduce a group-author abbreviation in APA?

Only when the abbreviation is well known, will spare the reader a long name, or will appear at least three times in the paper — the test on p. 268 of the Publication Manual. If you cite the group once or twice, keep the full name. Introduce the abbreviation once per paper, not once per heading.

Can I name the organization in an MLA sentence if the works-cited entry starts with the title?

Only if the title still appears as the key. The Style Center's 16 August 2016 post allows "According to the Modern Language Association of America, documentation should be useful to readers (MLA Handbook 4)." It rejects "The Modern Language Association of America says that documentation should be useful to readers (4)," because MLA Handbook — the first element of the entry — never appears.

How do I cite a government agency as the author?

APA 7 names the most specific agency as author and moves its parent departments into the publisher position, as in the official National Cancer Institute Taking Time sample. MLA 9 lists the government, the department, and the agency from largest to smallest, or starts with the agency name alone if you do so consistently; when the agency published the page, the title comes first. Chicago 18 uses the agency's common name and lists a parent department as publisher only when the document names it. Use the dedicated government guides for statutes, hearings, and numbered reports.

How do I cite a group author in Chicago author-date?

List the organization, the year, the title, and the publisher. For a website, the live Quick Guide puts the site owner first: Google. 2023. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Effective November 15. https://policies.google.com/privacy. The in-text citation is (Google 2023) with no comma before the year. If you cite a group often, you may list it under its abbreviation with the full name in parentheses, WHO (World Health Organization), and cite (WHO 2018).

Is the sponsor or funder of a report its author?

No. The author is the organization that wrote the report and takes responsibility for it. A funder named in a "prepared for" line or an acknowledgment is not cited as the author in any of the three styles, though it may be mentioned in your prose. APA's title-page test is stricter still: people named only in an acknowledgments section are not authors either.

How do I cite two reports by the same organization in the same year?

APA adds lowercase letters to the year in title order, 2020a and 2020b, in both the reference list and the in-text citations. Chicago author-date does the same with 2020a and 2020b. MLA has no year in the in-text citation, so the titles distinguish the entries; use three hyphens in place of the repeated author name for the second and later entries when the author element actually repeats. See same author, same year.

How to Cite a Group Author in APA, MLA, and Chicago [2026]

How to Cite a Group Author: Quick Answer

Put the organization's full name where a person's name would go. APA 7 always spells that name out in the reference list and may introduce a well-known abbreviation in square brackets the first time the group appears in the text. MLA 9 also uses the full name — unless the organization is both author and publisher, in which case the MLA Style Center drops the author element and begins with the title. Chicago 18 lists the organization as author and, when it published the work, as publisher too.

Templates (labelled patterns, not sources)

APA 7 reference:

Name of Group. (Year). Title of report (Report No. 123). Publisher if different from the author. https://xxxxx

APA 7 first in-text citation:

(Name of Group [ABBR], Year) — later: (ABBR, Year)

MLA 9 works cited, separate publisher:

Name of Group. Title of Report. Publisher, Year.

MLA 9 works cited, author is the publisher:

Title of Report. Name of Group, Year.

MLA 9 in-text:

(Name of Group 12) or (Title of Report 12) — key to whichever element begins the works-cited entry

Chicago 18 note:

1. Name of Group, Title of Report (Publisher, Year), 12.

Chicago 18 bibliography:

Name of Group. Title of Report. Publisher, Year.

Chicago 18 author-date:

Name of Group. Year. Title of Report. Publisher. — cited as (Name of Group Year, 12)

Is the organization really the author?

A logo on the cover is not authorship. Reports often name people on the title page and the organization only as publisher. Grant-funded studies name a funder that wrote nothing. Settle the author question before you format anything. The Alamo Colleges reprint of APA 7's group-author rules, last updated 29 May 2026, puts the title-page test in two sentences:

APA 7 group-author test (Alamo reprint, 29 May 2026)

If the names of individuals are presented on the title page or cover, treat the work as having individual authors.

If only the name of the group is presented on the title page or cover, treat the work as having a group author, even if individuals are credited elsewhere in the work (e.g., in an acknowledgments section).

Read the title page, cover, and any "suggested citation" box. If a person is named as author, cite the person and treat the organization as the publisher.
If no person is named and the organization presents the work as its own, the organization is the author. A WHO report, an APA dictionary entry, and an NEA survey all qualify.
Distinguish the author from the sponsor. "Prepared for the Ford Foundation by RAND" makes RAND the author, not the Ford Foundation.
For a government document, note the most specific agency that issued it and its parent departments. The three styles place those names differently.
Check whether the author and the publisher are the same body. That single fact changes the MLA entry and the APA source element.

If the search turns up no person and no responsible organization, the work is genuinely authorless and the title moves first; see how to cite a source with no author. If the work names several people and an organization, the people are the authors. For three or more personal authors, follow how to cite multiple authors.

APA 7: spell out the group, abbreviate only in the text

APA's group authors page and Publication Manual §8.21 treat a corporation, agency, or association the way they treat a person: the reference list carries the name that begins the in-text citation. Two extra rules follow. The list never carries the abbreviation. And when the group also published the work, the publisher slot is empty. The Alamo reprint of the official wording:

APA 7 official group-author wording (Alamo reprint)

Spell out the full name of a group author in the reference list entry, followed by a period.

An abbreviation for the group author can be used in the text (e.g., NIMH for National Institute of Mental Health); however, do not include an abbreviation for a group author in a reference list entry.

Correct: National Institute of Mental Health.

Incorrect: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Incorrect: NIMH.

Official APA sample: World Health Organization, 2025

The Common Reference Examples Guide (last updated 3 March 2026) uses a WHO report as the §10.4 "Report by a Group Author" sample. WHO wrote the report and WHO published it, so the source element is only the URL. The 2020 tuberculosis report that older classroom handouts still copy is no longer the official example.

APA 7 Common Reference Examples, 3 March 2026 — §10.4

Reference:

World Health Organization. (2025). Global report on neglected tropical diseases. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/9c4655d8-3671-4503-ae51-4a80bb44d5e0/content

First parenthetical citation:

(World Health Organization [WHO], 2025)

Later parenthetical citations:

(WHO, 2025)

First narrative citation:

World Health Organization (WHO, 2025)

Later narrative citations:

WHO (2025)

When to introduce an abbreviation

Abbreviating is optional. Saint Joseph's College of Maine reprints the Publication Manual sentence from p. 268:

APA 7 p. 268 (Wellehan Library reprint)

You are not obligated to abbreviate the name of a group author, but you can if the abbreviation is well-known, will help avoid cumbersome repetition, or will appear at least three times in the paper.

Introduce the abbreviation in square brackets inside the first citation of that group, whether parenthetical or narrative, and nowhere else.
Spell the name out every time if you cite the group only once or twice. (National Institute of Mental Health, 2018) twice is clearer than an abbreviation the reader has to remember.
Introduce the abbreviation once per paper, not once per section. After (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025) every later citation is (WHO, 2025), even for a different WHO report.
Keep the reference list spelled out. WHO. (2025). is wrong. The entry is alphabetized under World, and the reader finds it by the full name.
Never abbreviate inside the reference list to match a short in-text form.

Author as publisher: omit the publisher

When the group author and the publisher are the same body, APA omits the publisher so the name is not printed twice. The official press-release sample on the Alamo gray-literature page states the rule and then demonstrates it. The Common Reference Examples Guide adds an APA dictionary entry and an APA press release that follow the same pattern.

APA 7, author and publisher are the same

When the author and the publisher of the press release are the same, omit the publisher to avoid repetition, as shown in the example.

Official FDA press release (Alamo reprint):

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2019, November 15). FDA approves first contact lens indicated to slow the progression of nearsightedness in children [Press release]. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-contact-lens-indicated-slow-progression-nearsightedness-children

Official APA press release (Common Reference Examples, 3 March 2026):

American Psychological Association. (2024, April 11). People who use willpower alone to achieve goals, resist temptation, deemed more trustworthy [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/04/people-who-use-willpower

Official APA dictionary entry (Common Reference Examples, §10.3):

American Psychological Association. (2018). Internet addiction. In APA dictionary of psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/internet-addiction

First in-text for the dictionary entry:

(American Psychological Association [APA], 2018)

Later in-text:

(APA, 2018)

Government agencies and parent agencies

For government work APA uses the most specific agency as the author. Parent departments that are not already part of that name move into the source element as the publisher, largest body first. The Alamo reprint of the official rule:

APA 7 official government-agency wording (Alamo reprint)

When numerous layers of government agencies are listed as the author of a work, use the most specific agency as the author in the reference (e.g., use "National Institute of Nursing Research" rather than "U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research"). The names of parent agencies not present in the group author name appear in the source element as the publisher.

APA Style's own report by a government agency page, reprinted on the same Alamo guide, uses the National Cancer Institute booklet Taking Time. NCI is the author. HHS and NIH appear only as publisher.

APA 7 official National Cancer Institute example

Reference:

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf

Parenthetical:

(National Cancer Institute, 2019)

Narrative:

National Cancer Institute (2019)

Do not stack the hierarchy into the author position. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. (2019). is an MLA habit, not an APA one, and it moves the entry to the wrong place in the alphabet. The full walkthrough for numbered reports, CRS products, and the NCES 2024-versus-2026 title-page test is in how to cite a government report in APA.

Alphabetizing group authors

Alphabetize by the first significant word of the full name: American Psychological Association under A, World Health Organization under W.
Keep U.S. and United States exactly as the work prints them. APA's examples use U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which files under U.
Do not invert or rearrange a group name to bring a keyword forward. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stays as written.
A group author with several works in the same year takes letters after the year, 2020a and 2020b, ordered by title. The letters appear in the in-text citations too: (WHO, 2020a). See same author, same year.

MLA 9: skip the author when the organization is also the publisher

MLA 9 treats an organization as a corporate author whenever it is responsible for the work, but it adds a rule the other styles lack. If that organization is also the publisher, skip the Author element and begin with the title. The MLA Style Center states both halves on one page:

MLA Style Center, 9 August 2017

For works created by a corporate author—an institution, a government body, or another kind of organization—list that entity as the author:

Hart Research Associates. It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success. Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2013, www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/it-takes-more-major-employer-priorities-college-learning-and.

An exception: if a corporate author is also the work’s publisher, list that entity as the publisher and skip the Author element:

Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004.

When the writer and the publisher are different organizations

The Hart Research Associates report is the official Style Center sample for a corporate author that is not the publisher. Hart wrote the report. The Association of American Colleges and Universities published it on its website. Because the website name matches the publisher, the publisher slot is omitted and the site becomes the container. Cite it in the text by the first element of the works-cited entry: Hart, not AAC&U.

MLA 9 official in-text for a corporate author

Cite these works in your text by title or by corporate author—that is, by the first item in the works-cited-list entry:

Eighty percent of employers believe that all college students "should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences" (Hart).

When the author and the publisher are the same

The handbook's own classroom example is the National Endowment for the Arts report Reading at Risk, still hosted as a PDF on arts.gov. Because the organization would appear twice, the author element is dropped. The entry is then alphabetized by its title, ignoring an initial A, An, or The, and the in-text citation uses the title rather than the organization. Compare this with the APA WHO entry above, which kept the organization as author and dropped the publisher instead.

MLA 9, author is the publisher

Works cited (official Style Center):

Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004.

In-text keyed to the title:

(Reading at Risk 3)

Do not write:

National Endowment for the Arts. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004.

The organizations-as-authors post (16 August 2016) answers the follow-up students actually type: may I still name the organization in the sentence if the works-cited entry begins with the title? No. The text has to key to the list.

MLA Style Center, 16 August 2016 — key the text to the list

No. The text should always key to the list of works cited. You can provide the key in the parenthetical citation or in your text. Below are two acceptable ways to cite the MLA Handbook:

According to the Modern Language Association of America, documentation should be useful to readers (MLA Handbook 4).

According to the MLA Handbook, documentation should be useful to readers (4).

The following two examples are insufficient, because MLA Handbook, the title of the work that begins the works-cited-list entry, is not mentioned:

Documentation should be useful to readers (Modern Language Association 4).

The Modern Language Association of America says that documentation should be useful to readers (4).

MLA Handbook. 8th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2016.

Government agencies in MLA

MLA 9 lists a government author from the largest unit to the smallest, separated by commas, when a separate publisher is named. When the agency published the page itself, the author-is-publisher rule takes over and the entry begins with the title. MLA also lets you begin with the agency's own name when the larger government is not needed to identify it; whichever form you choose, use it for every entry from that government. Do not invent an MLA citation for a CDC threat report. The official government walkthrough — including the live Style Center Tennessee House Bill 2420 sample — is how to cite a government document in MLA.

In-text citations for long names

MLA in-text citations are meant to be short. Prefer the full name in your sentence and keep only the page number in parentheses, the way the Style Center treats the Modern Language Association of America above. If the name must go in parentheses, shorten it to the shortest noun phrase that still leads the reader to the works-cited entry — Hart, not an invented HRA initialism that never appears in the list. Drop an initial A, An, or The. Do not import APA's bracketed-abbreviation form into MLA.

MLA 9, shortening a corporate author

Full name in prose (preferred):

Eighty percent of employers believe that all college students "should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences" (Hart).

Title-first entry, keyed to the title:

According to Reading at Risk, fewer than half of American adults read literature (3).

Do not write:

(NEA 3) or (National Endowment for the Arts 3) when the works-cited entry begins with Reading at Risk

Chicago 18: list the organization as author and as publisher

Chicago is the simplest of the three on this point. CMOS 18 §13.86 says to list an organization as the author only when no personal author is named. The organization may also be listed as the publisher in the same entry. Chicago 18 dropped the requirement to give a place of publication, so University of Chicago Press, 2024 is complete where CMOS 17 wrote Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Chicago 18 §13.86 — organization as author and publisher

Note (University of Memphis CMOS 18 reprint, 15 May 2026):

1. University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2024), 13.86. https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos18.

Bibliography:

University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. University of Chicago Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos18.

Official CMOS 18 website samples: the owner is the author in the bibliography

The live Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date Quick Guides, opened 21 September 2026, do not use a WHO report. They use organization-owned web pages. In a note the page title usually comes first. In the bibliography the site owner — Google, the Wikimedia Foundation, Yale University — is the group author. That is the Chicago group-author pattern students actually meet on the open web.

CMOS 18 Quick Guide web pages (Notes-Bibliography)

Note:

1. "Privacy Policy," Privacy & Terms, Google, effective November 15, https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Bibliography:

Google. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Effective November 15, 2023. https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Note:

2. "Wikipedia: Manual of Style," Wikimedia Foundation, last modified December 19, 2023, 21:54 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.

Bibliography:

Wikimedia Foundation. "Wikipedia: Manual of Style." Last modified December 19, 2023, at 21:54 (UTC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.

Note (no date; access date required):

3. "About Yale: Yale Facts," Yale University, accessed March 8, 2022, https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.

Bibliography:

Yale University. "About Yale: Yale Facts." Accessed March 8, 2022. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.

CMOS 18 Quick Guide web pages (Author-Date)

Reference list:

Google. 2023. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Effective November 15. https://policies.google.com/privacy.

In-text:

(Google 2023)

Reference list:

Wikimedia Foundation. 2023. "Wikipedia: Manual of Style." Last modified December 19, at 21:54 (UTC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.

In-text:

(Wikimedia Foundation 2022)

Reference list (n.d. plus access date):

Yale University. n.d. "About Yale: Yale Facts." Accessed March 8, 2022. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.

The Wikimedia in-text year on the live Author-Date guide is printed (Wikimedia Foundation 2022) even though the reference-list year is 2023. Quote the guide as it stands; in your own paper, keep the year in the citation and the reference-list entry the same. For a page with no date, Chicago uses n.d. plus an access date — or a Wayback Machine archive URL — the way the Yale sample does. See how to cite a source with no date.

Abbreviations in Chicago

In notes-bibliography style, you can give the abbreviation in parentheses after the full name in the first note and use the abbreviation alone in later notes. In author-date style, CMOS lets a frequently cited organization be listed under its abbreviation, with the full name in parentheses, so that the short in-text citation and the reference-list entry begin with the same letters. Curtin University's CMOS 18 Author-Date guide reprints that layout with a real WHO report.

Chicago 18 author-date, abbreviation first (Curtin CMOS 18 reprint)

Reference list, abbreviation first:

WHO (World Health Organization). 2018. Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2018/en/.

In-text with the abbreviation:

(WHO 2018)

Reference list, full name (when you never abbreviate):

World Health Organization. 2018. Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018. World Health Organization.

In-text with the full name:

(World Health Organization 2018, 12)

Pick one form per paper. Listing the entry under WHO while the text cites (World Health Organization 2018) breaks the alphabetical lookup that author-date depends on. Chicago's in-text citation has no comma between the name and the year, and the page number follows a comma: (WHO 2018, 12), not (WHO, 2018, p. 12). See Chicago in-text citations for the rest of the author-date punctuation.

Government agencies in Chicago

Chicago names the issuing agency as the author in the form readers know it, usually with the jurisdiction attached: U.S. Census Bureau, U.K. Office for National Statistics, Ontario Ministry of Health. The parent department can be listed as the publisher when the document names it. Chicago does not build the MLA-style chain of government, department, and agency in the author position. The official government walkthrough is how to cite government documents in Chicago. Do not invent a Household Pulse or other technical-documentation citation that the Quick Guide does not print.

Quick comparison

How each style handles an organization in the author position.
Decision	APA 7	MLA 9	Chicago 18
Author element	Full name of the group, never abbreviated	Full name of the group, unless the group is also the publisher	Full name of the group, or abbreviation with full name in parentheses
Author is also the publisher	Keep the author; omit the publisher	Drop the author; start with the title; list the group as publisher	List the group as both author and publisher
Abbreviation in the text	Introduce in brackets in the first citation: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025), then (WHO, 2025)	Key to the first works-cited element: (Hart) or (Reading at Risk 3); no APA-style brackets	Give the abbreviation in parentheses in the first note, then use it alone; author-date may list under the abbreviation
Government agency	Most specific agency as author; parent departments as publisher	Government, department, agency in descending order, or the agency name alone, consistently	Agency name as commonly known; parent department as publisher when named
Website owned by an organization	Organization as author; omit the site name when it repeats the author	Organization as author, or title first if the organization is also the publisher	Note often starts with the page title; bibliography lists the site owner as author (Google, Yale, Wikimedia)
In-text form	(Group, Year) or (ABBR, Year, p. 12)	(Group 12) or (Short Title 12) when the entry begins with the title	(Group Year, 12) in author-date; shortened note in notes-bibliography
Alphabetized by	First significant word of the full name	First significant word of the name, or of the title if the author was dropped	First significant word of the name or abbreviation as listed

APA 7: keep the author, drop the publisher

World Health Organization. (2025). Global report on neglected tropical diseases. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/9c4655d8-3671-4503-ae51-4a80bb44d5e0/content

The reader looks up the report under World. In-text: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025), then (WHO, 2025).

MLA 9: drop the author, keep the publisher

Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004.

The reader looks up the report under Reading. In-text: (Reading at Risk 3), never (National Endowment for the Arts 3).

Chicago 18: keep both

University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style. 18th ed. University of Chicago Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos18.

The reader looks up the manual under University. Note: 1. University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2024), 13.86.

Common mistakes

Writing WHO. (2025). in an APA reference list. The list spells out every group; abbreviations live only in the text.
Re-introducing the abbreviation in every section: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025) appears once per paper.
Using an APA-style bracketed abbreviation in MLA or Chicago. MLA keys to the first works-cited element; Chicago uses parentheses.
Repeating the organization as APA publisher. The official FDA and APA press releases omit the second name.
Keeping the organization as MLA author when it is also the publisher. MLA wants the title first and the group once, as publisher.
Citing a title-first MLA entry by the organization's name in the text. If the entry begins with Reading at Risk or MLA Handbook, the parenthetical has to use that title.
Stacking the government hierarchy into the APA author position. APA puts the specific agency first and the parents in the publisher slot.
Dropping the Chicago publisher because it repeats the author. Chicago lists both names.
Treating a funder or sponsor as the author. "Prepared for" names the client, not the writer.
Moving the title first because no person is named. An organization is an author; only a work with no responsible body at all is authorless.
Copying a 2020 WHO tuberculosis reference and calling it the current APA sample. The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples Guide uses the 2025 neglected-tropical-diseases report.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cite an organization as the author in APA 7?: Write the organization's full name in the author position, then the year, the italic title, and the source. The official 3 March 2026 sample is World Health Organization. (2025). Global report on neglected tropical diseases. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/9c4655d8-3671-4503-ae51-4a80bb44d5e0/content. If the organization also published the work, omit the publisher. In the text, cite (World Health Organization, 2025), or introduce an abbreviation the first time as (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025) and then use (WHO, 2025).
Do I abbreviate the group author in the APA reference list?: No. The Alamo reprint of APA 7 is explicit: spell out the full name, then a period. National Institute of Mental Health. is correct. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). and NIMH. are both wrong. Abbreviations are an in-text convenience, introduced in square brackets in the first citation and used alone afterward.
When should I introduce a group-author abbreviation in APA?: Only when the abbreviation is well known, will spare the reader a long name, or will appear at least three times in the paper — the test on p. 268 of the Publication Manual. If you cite the group once or twice, keep the full name. Introduce the abbreviation once per paper, not once per heading.
How does MLA cite a work whose author and publisher are the same organization?: Skip the author element and begin the works-cited entry with the title, then list the organization once as the publisher. The official Style Center sample is Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004. The in-text citation then uses the shortened title, (Reading at Risk 3), because that is how the entry begins. Naming the Endowment in the parentheses is a mismatch.
Can I name the organization in an MLA sentence if the works-cited entry starts with the title?: Only if the title still appears as the key. The Style Center's 16 August 2016 post allows "According to the Modern Language Association of America, documentation should be useful to readers (MLA Handbook 4)." It rejects "The Modern Language Association of America says that documentation should be useful to readers (4)," because MLA Handbook — the first element of the entry — never appears.
How do I cite a government agency as the author?: APA 7 names the most specific agency as author and moves its parent departments into the publisher position, as in the official National Cancer Institute Taking Time sample. MLA 9 lists the government, the department, and the agency from largest to smallest, or starts with the agency name alone if you do so consistently; when the agency published the page, the title comes first. Chicago 18 uses the agency's common name and lists a parent department as publisher only when the document names it. Use the dedicated government guides for statutes, hearings, and numbered reports.
How do I cite a group author in Chicago author-date?: List the organization, the year, the title, and the publisher. For a website, the live Quick Guide puts the site owner first: Google. 2023. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Effective November 15. https://policies.google.com/privacy. The in-text citation is (Google 2023) with no comma before the year. If you cite a group often, you may list it under its abbreviation with the full name in parentheses, WHO (World Health Organization), and cite (WHO 2018).
Is the sponsor or funder of a report its author?: No. The author is the organization that wrote the report and takes responsibility for it. A funder named in a "prepared for" line or an acknowledgment is not cited as the author in any of the three styles, though it may be mentioned in your prose. APA's title-page test is stricter still: people named only in an acknowledgments section are not authors either.
How do I cite two reports by the same organization in the same year?: APA adds lowercase letters to the year in title order, 2020a and 2020b, in both the reference list and the in-text citations. Chicago author-date does the same with 2020a and 2020b. MLA has no year in the in-text citation, so the titles distinguish the entries; use three hyphens in place of the repeated author name for the second and later entries when the author element actually repeats. See same author, same year.

Generate a group-author citation

Enter the organization in the author field and leave the personal-name fields empty. The formatter keeps the full name in APA, applies MLA's title-first rule when the author matches the publisher, and lists both names in Chicago.

Report citation generator →In-text citation generator →

How to Cite a Group Author: Quick Answer

Is the organization really the author?

APA 7: spell out the group, abbreviate only in the text

Official APA sample: World Health Organization, 2025

When to introduce an abbreviation

Author as publisher: omit the publisher

Government agencies and parent agencies

Alphabetizing group authors

MLA 9: skip the author when the organization is also the publisher

When the writer and the publisher are different organizations

When the author and the publisher are the same

Government agencies in MLA

In-text citations for long names

Chicago 18: list the organization as author and as publisher

Official CMOS 18 website samples: the owner is the author in the bibliography

Abbreviations in Chicago

Government agencies in Chicago

Quick comparison

Common mistakes

Frequently asked questions

Generate a group-author citation

Related guides and official manuals