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APA Quick Citation Guide

This guide contains examples of common citation formats in APA (American Psychological Association) Style 7th edition

Film or Video

Note: Citations with more than one line of text should have a hanging indent of 1/2 inch or 5 spaces.

Important Elements

  • Director
  • Date of release
  • Title (in italics)
  • Format 
  • Studio

Film or video

Johnston, J. (Director). (2004). Hidalgo [Film]. Touchstone/Disney.

TV Series

Important Elements

  • Producer(s)
  • Date(s) of broadcast
  • Title of series (in italics)
  • Format
  • Production company

TV series:

Crane, D., Kauffman, M., & Bright, K. (Executive Producers). (1994-2004). Friends. [TV series]. Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions; Warner Bros.

TV series episode:

Gittelsohn, E. (Director), & Brown, C. (Writer). (1995, October 12). The one with five steaks and an eggplant (Season 2, Episode 4) [TV series episode]. In Crane, D., Kauffman, M., & Bright, K. (Executive Producers), Friends. Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions; Warner Bros.

Interviews

In APA style, interviews and other forms of unpublished personal communication, such as e-mail, letters, memos or class notes, are not included in the reference list. Cite interviews and personal communication in parentheses within the text of your paper:

Professor Smith contends that the use of educational technology in the classroom increases student engagement (J. Smith, personal communication, September 4, 2015).

Indirect Sources

If you refer to a source that is cited in another source, list only the source you consulted directly (the secondary source) in your reference list. Name the original source in the text of your paper, and cite the secondary source in parentheses: “Wallace argues that…. (as cited in Smith, 2009).” In this example, only the Smith source would be included in the reference list. Only include sources that you consulted directly in your reference list.

Whenever possible, try to find and consult the original source. If the Penn State University Libraries does not have the original source, we can try to get it for you through interlibrary loan.

Map Citation

Important elements:

  • Author's last name, first initial, middle initial. (individual author names or organization)
  • Year: Date of content creation/publication
  • Title of content (italicized)
  • Format [map, dataset, type of dataset] (include in brackets the format type)
  • Publisher (include the publisher of the content) (Publisher may be included in place of author depending whether a specific author is referenced)
  • URL for content

Map

Author. (Year). Title of map [format]. Edition. Scale. No. Place of Publication: Publisher. 

Ashmun, J. (1830). Map of the West Coast of Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas, including the Colony of Liberia. [map]. Philadelphia: Finley, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g8882c.lm000002

Geospatial Data 

Author(s). (Year). Title of the Dataset (version #) [Data set]. Publisher. DOI or URL 

The bracketed [Data set] could also include unpublished raw dataset, or other description of the raw data.  

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. (2021). Pennsylvania county boundaries [Data set]. https://www.pasda.psu.edu/uci/DataSummary.aspx?dataset=24 

Interactive map application 

Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information. (2017). State College change through time [ArcGIS Online]. http://psu-libs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=8b8e085ddc4746bb9dcac35c62bfd1f9 

ArcGIS Online layer 

View the item details for credits (attribution) information. 

Centre County Government GIS Department. (2020). Hydrography [ArcGIS Online Feature Layer]. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c611558362d241ac9b5a1bf4bef3356f