When to Use APA Style (7th Edition)
Use APA Style when the syllabus, journal Instructions for Authors, or department handbook names it. The current manual is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition (2020). APA is the usual default in psychology, education, nursing, social work, and many other social and behavioral sciences — but a named instruction always beats a field custom. This page answers one question: should this paper use APA 7? It is not the any-style workflow or the field-by-field catalog.
By CitationEasy Editorial Team21 min read
On this page
Quick Answer: When to Use APA Style
Start with the document that will grade or publish the paper. If that document says APA, use APA 7th edition. If it is silent, use the department default, then confirm against a recent article in a journal your instructor actually reads. Do not pick APA because a generator offered it first.
Use APA 7 when
- The assignment, rubric, or LMS drop-box names APA or APA 7th edition
- The journal's Instructions for Authors name APA Style — as Psychological Science and AERA journals do
- The thesis or dissertation template is an APA student paper
- The course sits in psychology, education, nursing, social work, counseling, or another social or behavioral science and no other manual is named
- You were told to choose a style and the paper reports methods, data, or recent studies whose year the reader needs to see
Do not default to APA when
- The syllabus names MLA, Chicago, Turabian, Harvard, ASA, IEEE, AMA, Vancouver, ACS, or Bluebook
- The paper is a literature, language, or close-reading essay (usually MLA)
- The paper is history, art history, religion, or archival work (usually Chicago notes)
- The venue is a clinical or medical journal that uses AMA or Vancouver
- The venue is an IEEE Transactions paper or another numbered engineering style
The 7th edition states, in one paragraph, who the manual is for:
Publication Manual, 7th edition, Introduction
APA Style is a set of guidelines for clear and precise scholarly communication that helps authors, both new and experienced, achieve excellence in writing. It is used by millions of people around the world in psychology and also in fields ranging from nursing to social work, communications to education, business to engineering, and other disciplines for the preparation of manuscripts for publication as well as for writing student papers, dissertations, and theses.
That sentence is from the Introduction to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (p. xvii). APA's own list is broad. A course or journal can still require a different house style inside those same fields — especially business, communications, and engineering. The rest of this page shows how to tell which case you are in.
Current Edition: APA 7th (2020)
APA 7th edition is still the current APA Style in 2026. The American Psychological Association released the manual in October 2019 with a 2020 copyright year. There is no 8th edition. Unless an instructor explicitly requires the 6th edition (2010), do not use APA 6 running heads, publisher locations, or the old "Retrieved from" DOI line.
| Fact | Use this |
|---|---|
| Current edition | 7th edition (2020) |
| Official manual | Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association |
| Student companion | Concise Guide to APA Style, 7th edition (2019) — high school and undergraduate writers |
| Official website | APA Style |
| Paper-format chapter | Paper format (Publication Manual Chapter 2; Concise Guide Chapter 1) |
| Documentation system | One system only: author–date |
| End list title | References (not Works Cited, not Bibliography) |
| Older edition | APA 6th (2010) is superseded unless the instructor names it |
The Concise Guide is the official student abridgement, not a second style. Citations and references are the same as in the full manual. Buy or borrow the Publication Manual if you are writing a thesis, teaching the style, or submitting to a journal that names it. Cite the manual itself like this when you need a reference for the style you followed:
Reference for the current manual
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
The Assignment Beats the Field
Field convention is a tie-breaker. A psychology seminar that says MLA still wants MLA. An English course that says APA still wants APA. Harvard College's writing program puts the same rule first, then names the three styles most college papers actually use:
Harvard Guide to Using Sources
Some of your instructors will specify which citation format you should use; others will tell you to choose your own citation format as long as you use it consistently. The most common citation formats are MLA (Modern Language Association) style, which is primarily used for papers in the humanities; APA (American Psychological Association) style, which is primarily used for papers in the social sciences; and Chicago style (The Chicago Manual of Style), which is used for both humanities and social science papers.
That paragraph is from Citing Sources in the Harvard Guide to Using Sources. The same page adds three course-level exceptions a field map hides: some Harvard science courses require AMA; chemistry may require the American Chemical Society guide; and Harvard's Department of Economics publishes its own departmental style sheet. If you are not sure, the Guide's last line is the method: check with your instructor. Chicago's public Quick Guide says the same thing from the publisher's side:
Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide
Most authors choose the system used by others in their field or required by their publisher. Students should check with their instructor before deciding which system to use.
The Chicago sentence is from the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide. Walk this order and stop at the first official answer:
- Read the assignment sheet, rubric, or LMS text. Phrases such as "APA 7th edition," "APA format," or "follow APA guidelines for references" are the whole decision.
- Read the syllabus or module handbook. Some courses name one style for every paper; some name a different style for a literature review than for a lab report.
- If you are submitting to a journal or press, open the current Instructions for Authors. House style outranks the department. Two real cases are below.
- Check the thesis template or graduate-school manual. Dissertation offices often lock a student-paper version of APA and forbid a professional running head.
- Ask the person who will assess the paper, in writing, if those documents are silent.
- Only then use the field table below. Confirm it against a recent article in a journal your reader recognizes.
Need a first-pass check?
The citation style quiz asks the same assignment-first questions. Use it to get a candidate, then confirm the edition against this page or which citation style should I use?.
What a Real Journal's Instructions Actually Say
A field custom is a guess. Instructions for Authors are a written rule. These three venues show the difference between "psychology and education usually use APA" and "this publisher named the 7th edition."
Psychological Science names APA 7 — and then adds house rules
The flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science is the cleanest current example of "use APA, then obey the journal." Its submission guidelines say:
Psychological Science, Manuscript Style, Structure, and Content
Manuscripts published in Psychological Science must follow the style of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition, with respect to handling of the order of manuscript sections, headings and subheadings, references, abbreviations, and symbols.
For initial submissions, authors may deviate from some of the style requirements (e.g., heading and subheading style, reference format, location of tables and figures). However, invited revisions and final versions of manuscripts must follow APA style.
The same page then requires an anonymized review file, tables and figures embedded in the main text, test statistics to two decimal places, and exact p values to three decimals (use p less than .001 when the value is smaller). Those are house rules on top of APA 7, not a reason to switch manuals. A student paper for a methods course does not need the anonymized file. A manuscript headed to Psychological Science does.
AERA journals name APA 7 for education research
Education coursework usually uses APA because the field's journals do. The Review of Educational Research author instructions state the rule for the whole association:
Review of Educational Research, Manuscript Style, Length, and Format
The style guide for the Review of Educational Research and all AERA journals is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed., 2020.
RER then adds house limits the manual does not: a 65-page or 15,000-word cap, 12-point Times New Roman, a fully capitalized running head, and an anonymized review file. That is why "my education course uses APA" and "I am submitting to RER" are different jobs. The citations are APA 7 either way. The title page is not.
JAMA Network journals name AMA, not APA
A public-health or nursing student who reads JAMA will see numbered superscripts, not (Author, Year). JAMA Health Forum states the medical default:
JAMA Health Forum, Manuscript Style
Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition, and/or the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.
That sentence is why a nursing theory paper and a manuscript for a JAMA Network title can share a topic and still need different manuals. US nursing programs usually want APA 7 for student work. Clinical medicine journals usually want AMA 11 or Vancouver. See the nursing citation guide and AMA vs Vancouver.
Disciplines That Usually Use APA
APA began as the house style of the American Psychological Association. The 7th edition now presents itself as a general scholarly-writing system. Treat the table as a default, not a guarantee. The caveat column is the part students miss.
| Field | Usual default | The caveat that actually matters |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology and counseling | APA 7 | Almost always. A methods or clinical course that names a journal's house style is the exception, not the rule. Psychological Science is APA 7 plus APS house rules. |
| Education | APA 7 | Standard for educational research, EdD/PhD theses, and AERA journals. A history-of-education seminar may want Chicago notes. |
| Nursing and many allied-health courses | APA 7 | US nursing programs and many nursing journals use APA. Clinical medicine journals often switch to AMA or Vancouver. |
| Social work | APA 7 | MSW and DSW papers almost always use APA. Cite the object you retrieved (a statute, a NASW code provision, a journal), not the database. |
| Sociology | Often APA in coursework; ASA in the discipline | The ASA Style Guide, 7th edition (2022), is the journal default. Confirm the syllabus before you assume APA. |
| Communication and media studies | Often APA | Some programs use Chicago or MLA for rhetorical or historical work. Check the seminar, not the major. |
| Business, management, and organizational behavior | Often APA in North America; Harvard in the UK and Australia | See Harvard vs APA and the business citation guide. A case course may want a house style. |
| Public health and health administration | APA or Vancouver | Behavioral and policy papers often use APA. Epidemiology and clinical trials more often use a numbered medical style. |
| Criminal justice and criminology | Often APA | Theory-heavy or historical papers sometimes use Chicago. Journals vary. |
| Engineering coursework that names APA | APA 7 | APA lists engineering among its users. IEEE Transactions and most CS venues still want IEEE numbered brackets. See IEEE vs APA. |
APA's public overview page also lists psychology, business, education, engineering, health professions, nursing, and social work. That is a usage map, not a license to ignore a named house style. For the full field-by-field catalog, use citation styles by discipline. For psychology-specific source types (DSM-5-TR, tests, PsyArXiv), use the psychology citation guide.
When Not to Use APA Style
APA loses when the reader needs page-level pointers into a literary text, numbered footnotes for archives, or a compact numbered list for clinical or engineering sentences. Those are different reading experiences, not punctuation variants. Chicago's Quick Guide explains the two reading experiences that sit next to APA:
Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide, the two systems
Notes and bibliography:
The notes and bibliography system, Chicago’s oldest and most flexible, can accommodate a wide variety of sources, including unusual ones that don’t fit neatly into the author-date system. For this reason, it is preferred by many working in the humanities, including literature, history, and the arts.
Author-date:
Because it credits researchers by name directly in the text while at the same time emphasizing the date of each source, the author-date system is preferred by many in the sciences and social sciences.
APA has only the second of those systems, with APA punctuation. Chicago author-date is not a license to paste APA parentheses into a history paper. If the assignment wants notes, use notes.
| If you are writing | Use | Why APA is the wrong default |
|---|---|---|
| Literature, languages, composition, film close reading | MLA 9th edition (2021) | MLA is author–page. The year is not the point; the passage is. Details: APA vs MLA. |
| History, art history, music, theology, archives | Chicago 18th edition (2024) notes-bibliography, or Turabian 9th | Notes keep unusual sources and commentary out of the sentence. Details: APA vs Chicago. |
| Sociology journals and many sociology theses | ASA 7th edition (2022) | ASA is author–date and looks like APA, but the colon-page rule and reference punctuation differ. |
| Clinical medicine, many biomedical journals | AMA 11th or Vancouver / NLM | Numbered citations keep methods sentences short. JAMA Network journals use AMA. |
| Chemistry | ACS | ACS is the American Chemical Society's own system. |
| Electrical engineering, computer science venues | IEEE | Numbered square brackets, not author–date. |
| US legal writing and law reviews | Bluebook 22nd edition (2025) | APA has a thin legal chapter. Law reviews do not use it as house style. See the law citation guide. |
Never mix two manuals in one paper. An APA reference list with MLA in-text citations, or Chicago footnotes plus an APA reference list, is not a hybrid style. It is two incomplete systems.
Student Paper or Professional Paper?
APA 7 split paper format into two tracks. Coursework, theses, and dissertations use the student paper. Manuscripts headed to a journal use the professional paper. Citations are the same on both tracks. Title-page elements are not. Chapter 1 refuses to invent a single required outline for student work:
Publication Manual, 7th edition, §1.10
However, because the scope of what constitutes a student paper is broad and flexible, and because students submit papers to their academic institutions rather than to an APA journal, we do not designate formal requirements for the nature or contents of an APA Style student paper.
Students should follow the guidelines and requirements developed by their instructors, departments, and/or academic institutions when writing papers, including dissertations and theses; these guidelines and requirements may entail adaptations of or additions to the APA Style guidelines described in this manual.
Section 2.2 then lists what a student paper usually contains, and what it usually drops:
Publication Manual §2.2
Student papers (e.g., narrative essays, reaction or response papers, literature review papers; see Section 1.10) usually include, at minimum, a title page (see Sections 2.3–2.6), page numbers (see Section 2.18), text (see Section 2.11), and a reference list (see Section 2.12).
Student papers do not typically include a running head, an author note, or an abstract, unless specifically requested by the instructor or institution.
Section 2.8 is the running-head rule students still copy from a 2018 template:
Publication Manual §2.8
Running heads are required only for manuscripts being submitted for publication. Running heads are not required for student papers unless the instructor or institution requests them; thus, the header for a student paper includes only the page number.
Use the same running head on every page, including the title page; do not include the label "Running head" to identify the running head on any page.
| Element | Student paper (coursework, thesis) | Professional paper (journal manuscript) |
|---|---|---|
| Title page | Title, name, affiliation, course, instructor, due date (§2.3) | Title, names, affiliations, author note |
| Running head | Not required unless the instructor asks for one (§2.8) | Required: 50 characters or fewer, all caps, no "Running head:" label |
| Page header | Page number only, top right, including page 1 | Running head left, page number right |
| Abstract | Only if the instructor or graduate school requires it | Required for most journals; length is a house rule |
| Keywords | Only if requested | Usual under the abstract |
| Headings | Use only as many levels as the paper needs; a short paper may have none | Levels follow the journal article's structure |
| Citations | Author–date, same rules | Author–date, same rules |
Three other APA 7 facts still surprise students who learned APA 6 or a template that froze in 2018:
- Fonts are a list, not Times New Roman only. Section 2.19 permits 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Computer Modern. Use one font for the text; check whether your department locked a choice. RER, for example, locks 12-point Times New Roman.
- First person is preferred for your own work. Section 4.16 tells you to write "I conducted" or "we measured," not "the researcher conducted," when you are describing what you did.
- An abstract is not a default student-paper section. If the prompt does not ask for one, do not invent a 150–250 word block because a blog said every APA paper has an abstract.
Publication Manual §4.16
To avoid ambiguity in attribution, use the first person rather than the third person when describing the work you did as part of your research and when expressing your own views.
If you are writing a paper by yourself, use the pronoun “I”; do not use the pronoun “we” to refer to yourself if you do not have coauthors (see also Section 4.17). If you are writing a paper with coauthors, use the pronoun “we.” Do not refer to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as “the author(s)” or “the researcher(s).”
What Using APA Actually Requires
Choosing APA is choosing an author–date reading experience. The year sits next to the name so a methods reader can judge recency. Section 8.10 of the 7th edition states the system:
Publication Manual §8.10
Use the author–date citation system to cite references in the text in APA Style. In this system, each work used in a paper has two parts: an in-text citation and a corresponding reference list entry (see Figure 8.2).
The same chapter's worked example is a real 2016 article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. The parenthetical and narrative sentences below are the official wording from §8.11. The reference list line uses the article's Crossref record (volume 22, issue 1, pages 24–38, DOI 10.1037/xap0000073).
Official APA 7 example (Koehler, 2016)
Parenthetical citation (§8.11):
Falsely balanced news coverage can distort the public’s perception of expert consensus on an issue (Koehler, 2016).
Narrative citation (§8.11):
Koehler (2016) noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage.
Reference list:
Koehler, D. J. (2016). Can journalistic “false balance” distort public perception of consensus in expert opinion? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22(1), 24–38. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000073
That pattern is the whole system: author and year in the sentence, full source on the References page, hanging indent, sentence-case article title, italic journal and volume, DOI as a https://doi.org/ URL. Page numbers belong in the citation when you quote or point to a passage (p. or pp.). Works with no date use n.d. in both places (see how to cite a source with no date). Works with no named author start with the title (see how to cite a source with no author).
Four Worked Decisions
These are the cases students actually hit. None of them is "use APA because you are in a social-science building."
Walk the instruction, then stop
Psych methods course, syllabus silent
Department default is APA 7 student paper. Title page with course and due date. No running head. References, not Works Cited. Confirm against a recent article your instructor assigned.
English seminar on a psychology memoir, syllabus says MLA
Use MLA 9. The subject is psychology; the reader is a literature seminar that needs page-level pointers. Field custom loses.
EdD chapter headed to Review of Educational Research
APA 7 citations plus RER house rules: anonymized review file, 12-point Times New Roman, capitalized running head, 65-page cap. This is a professional paper, not a student title page.
Nursing paper that cites a JAMA trial
Your course paper is still APA 7 if the syllabus says APA. The JAMA article itself was prepared in AMA 11. Cite the trial in APA; do not paste JAMA superscripts into an APA reference list.
Failure Modes That Make a Paper Look Like the Wrong Style
- Using APA 6 on an APA 7 paper. A running head labeled "Running head:", a publisher city, or "doi:" in lowercase on a current assignment is usually a 6th-edition leftover.
- Writing Works Cited or Bibliography as the heading. APA's end list is titled References.
- Title case on article titles in the reference list. APA uses sentence case for article and book titles; the journal name stays in title case and italics.
- MLA-style (Koehler 24) or Chicago-style (Koehler 2016, 24) punctuation inside an APA paper. APA parentheticals are (Koehler, 2016, p. 24).
- Invented example citations. Do not fabricate a DOI, a volume, or a 2024 "Lee and Patel" article to fill a slot. Use a real source or a clearly labelled template.
- Treating the database as the source. Cite the journal article, report, or book you read — not ProQuest, CINAHL, or "PDF downloaded from the library."
- Adding a retrieval date to a stable journal DOI. APA 7 uses a retrieval date only for unarchived pages designed to change.
- Assuming every psychology-adjacent course wants APA. An interdisciplinary seminar, a history-of-psychology elective, or a medical-school lecture can name a different manual.
- Copying a journal's house extras onto a student paper. Anonymized files, 65-page caps, and locked Times New Roman belong to the venue that wrote them.
How This Page Differs From Nearby Guides
This URL answers one question: should this paper use APA? It does not replace the pairwise comparisons or the field catalog.
- Which citation style should I use? is the assignment-first workflow for any style, not an APA-only decision.
- Citation styles by discipline is the field-by-field map.
- APA vs MLA, APA vs Chicago, and Harvard vs APA compare two manuals side by side with the same sources in both styles.
- Psychology and nursing citation guides assume you already know you are in APA and teach field-specific sources.
- Format academic papers is the title-page, heading, and margin walkthrough once the style is settled.
Format the paper once the style is settled
When the assignment is APA 7, generate the references in the APA generator, then check each entry against the official example for that source type. The generator does not choose the style for you.
Related Guides
- Which Citation Style Should I Use?
- Citation Styles by Academic Discipline
- APA vs MLA: Which Citation Style Should You Use?
- APA vs Chicago: Key Differences and When to Use Each
- Harvard vs APA: Understanding the Differences
- ASA vs APA
- APA Citation Guide for Psychology Students
- Nursing Citation Guide: APA 7 for Clinical Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
- When should I use APA instead of MLA?
- Use APA when the assignment names APA, or when you are writing a social-science paper whose reader needs the year next to the name. Use MLA when the assignment names MLA, or when the paper is a humanities close reading that points to a passage. An English seminar on a psychology memoir still uses MLA if the syllabus says MLA. See APA vs MLA for the same book formatted both ways.
- Do all psychology classes require APA?
- Almost all psychology methods, research, and writing courses use APA 7. Check anyway. An interdisciplinary first-year seminar, a history-of-psychology elective, or a course cross-listed with medicine may name MLA, Chicago, or a medical style. Journals such as Psychological Science name APA 7 and then add house rules.
- Is APA required for nursing and education papers?
- US nursing programs and most education research courses use APA 7 for student papers. AERA journals, including Review of Educational Research, name the Publication Manual, 7th ed., 2020. Clinical medicine journals such as JAMA Network titles use AMA 11 instead. A history-of-education seminar may want Chicago notes. The syllabus and the target journal both beat the major.
- Should I use APA 6 or APA 7?
- Use APA 7th edition (2020) unless the instructor or publisher explicitly requires the 6th edition (2010). The visible tells are a student title page without a running head, no publisher city, up to 20 authors before ellipsis, and DOIs written as https://doi.org/ URLs. There is no 8th edition.
- Do student APA papers need a running head and abstract?
- No, not by default. APA 7 §2.8 requires a running head only on manuscripts submitted for publication. Student papers use a page number unless the instructor or institution asks for a running head. §2.2 drops the abstract and author note unless they are requested. Professional manuscripts still use both.
- Can I switch citation styles between courses?
- Yes. Use the style each course or journal names. Never mix two styles inside one paper. If a thesis chapter was drafted in APA and the journal wants Vancouver, restyle the whole manuscript.
- Is APA the same as Harvard referencing?
- No. Both are author–date families, but APA 7 is one official manual. Harvard referencing is a set of institutional variants, often taught through Cite Them Right. Punctuation, et al. thresholds, and the reference-list title differ. See Harvard vs APA.
- What if my source does not match an APA example?
- Identify the closest source type in Chapter 10 of the Publication Manual or on the APA Style reference examples page, then include author, date, title, and source. Do not invent a DOI or a volume number. Unusual sources (course slides, intranet pages, data sets) have official patterns; personal communications are cited in text only.
- Do I need to buy the Publication Manual?
- Not for a single undergraduate paper. The APA Style website, the Concise Guide to APA Style (7th edition), and a university writing center cover student-paper format and common references. Buy or borrow the full manual if you are writing a thesis, teaching the style, or submitting to an APA or AERA journal.
- Does a journal that "uses APA" want a student title page?
- No. Student title pages (course, instructor, due date, no running head) are for coursework. Psychological Science, RER, and other journals that name APA 7 want a professional manuscript plus their own anonymization, word-count, and figure rules. Read the current Instructions for Authors.