Skip to Main Content

APA Style Guide

Use this guide to assist you in understanding and creating APA citations.

How to Use this Guide

This guide is intended to help you to cite your sources and format your papers in accordance with APA standards. Have questions? Please reach out to the library to get more assistance.

  • For a searchable collection of APA basics, consult the American Psychological Association's APA Style website.

  • For an ongoing conversation addressing APA inquiries, tricky-to-cite resources, and more, check out the APA Style Blog.

  • For more complex APA style questions, please consult the official APA formatting rules found in The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.  Just click the link below to place a hold on one of QML's print copies.

Other Useful Resources

Templates

Bias Free Language Guidelines

Authors must strive to use language that is free of bias, meaning the implied or irrelevant evaluation of the group or groups they are writing about. It is unacceptable to use wording that might imply prejudicial beliefs or perpetuate biased assumptions against persons on the basis of age, disability, gender, racial or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or some combination of these or other personal factors. Instead, authors should use affirming and inclusive language.

Ask people from the groups about which you are writing to read and comment on your material or consult self-advocacy groups to determine appropriate terminology. If you work directly with participants, ask them what terms they use to describe themselves. Language changes over time, and it is important to use the terms that individuals and/or communities use to describe themselves, their experiences, and their practices. (Summary of APA Manual 7th Edition, Chapter 5.)

Describe at the Appropriate Level of Specificity
  • Be mindful to describe only relevant characteristics.
Be Sensitive to Labels
  • Choose labels with sensitivity, ensuring that the individuality and humanity of people are respected.
  • Compare groups with care. Bias occurs when authors use one group as the standard against which others are judged.
  • Different terms are used for individuals of different ages, and these terms are often gendered. Use the terms individuals use to self-describe, whether these are binary gender categories or nonbinary categories.
  • Appropriate age-specific examples may include: infant, child, adolescent, young man, adult woman, and older adult.
  • Do not use terms such as seniors or elderly as these are stigmatizing and connote a stereotype. Furthermore, use dementia instead of senility, if necessary, and specify the type of dementia when known.
  • Encompasses physical, psychological, intellectual, and socioemotional impairments. Members of some groups of people with disabilities have ways of referring to themselves that they would prefer others to adopt.
    • Person-First Language is where the person is emphasized, not the individual's disabling or chronic condition (such as a youth with epilepsy rather than an epileptic). This principle applies to groups of people as well (use people with substance use disorders rather than substance abusers).
    • Identity-First Language is where an individual’s disability becomes the focus. This can allow the individual to claim the disability and choose their identity rather than permitting others to name it or to select terms with negative implications. This is often used as an expression of cultural pride and a reclamation of a disability that once conferred a negative identity.
    • Person-First vs. Identify-First Language: Both approaches to language are designed to respect disabled persons. It is permissible to use either approach unless or until you know that a group clearly prefers one approach, in which case, you should adopt the preferred approach.
  • Avoid negative and condescending terminology. These can include terms that imply restriction (wheelchair-bound), slurs (cripple), or euphemisms (special needs). Many people with disabilities consider these terms patronizing and inappropriate. Emphasize both capabilities and concerns instead to avoid reducing people to their deficiencies.
  • Terms related to gender and sex are often conflated, making precision essential to writing without bias. Gender is a social construct and refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person's biological sex. Sex refers to one’s biological sex assignment.
  • Gender identity is a component of gender that describes a person's psychological sense of their gender and is distinct from sexual orientation. Cisgender refers to individuals whose sex assigned at birth aligns with their gender identity.
  • Transgender refers to persons whose gender identity, expression, and/or role does not conform to what is culturally associated with their sex assigned at birth. Some transgender people hold a binary gender, but others have a gender outside of this binary, such as gender-fluid or nonbinary.
  • When writing about a known individual, use that person's identified pronouns. Some individuals may alternate between pronouns while others use they as a singular pronoun. When referring to individuals whose identified pronouns are not known use the singular they to avoid making assumptions about an individual's gender.
  • Avoid using combinations such as he/she and (s)he as alternatives to the singular they because such constructions imply an exclusively binary nature of gender and exclude individuals who do not use these pronouns.
  • When authors write about personal characteristics, they should be sensitive to intersectionality – that is, to the way in which individuals are shaped by and identify with a vast array of cultural, structural, sociobiological, economic, and social contexts.
  • Because people are unique, many identities are possible. The experiences of a Black lesbian woman may be significantly different from White lesbian women, Black straight women, Black gay men, Black straight men, or any other identity groups that at first glance may seem to overlap.
  • Intersectional identities also include experiences of privileged contexts that intersect with those of oppression.
  • To address intersectionality in a paper, identify individuals' relevant characteristics and group memberships, and describe how these intersect in ways that are relevant to the study. Likewise, when reporting and interpreting the results, note the impact of any intersections on the findings rather than assuming that one characteristic is responsible.
  • Always write about the people who participated in a research study in a way that acknowledges their contributions and agency.
  • Descriptive terms such as respondents, participants, and subjects are acceptable.
  • Use the term patient to describe an individual diagnosed with a mental health, behavioral health, and/or medical disease, disorder, or problem who is actively receiving services from a health care provider.
  • Recognize the difference between a case, which is an occurrence of a disorder or illness, and a person who is affected by the disorder or illness.
  • Race refers to physical differences that groups and cultures consider socially significant. (Examples may include: Aboriginal, African American or Black, Asian, European American or White, Native American, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.)
  • Ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics such as language, ancestry, practices, and beliefs. (Examples may include: Latino/Latina/Latinx or Native national affiliations.)
  • Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. If people belong to multiple racial or ethnic groups, the names of the specific groups are capitalized, but the terms multiracial, biracial, and multiethnic are lowercase.
  • Language that essentializes or reifies race is strongly discouraged and is generally considered inappropriate as it portrays human groups monolithically, and often perpetuates stereotypes.
  • Do not assume that members of minority groups are underprivileged; underprivileged means having less money, education, or resources than the other people in a society. Terms such as economically marginalized and economically exploited may also be used rather than underprivileged. Whenever possible, use more specific terms or refer to discrimination or systematic oppression as a whole.
  • This is defined as a part of individual identity that includes a person's sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction. Use the term sexual orientation rather than sexual preference, or sexual identity. All people choose their partners regardless of their sexual orientation; however, the orientation itself is not a choice.
    • First, sexual orientation can be conceptualized by the degree to which a person feels sexual and emotional attraction, utilizing terms that may include sexual, demisexual, and asexual.
    • Second, sexual orientation can be conceptualized as having a direction. For people who identify as sexual or demisexual, their attraction then may be directed toward people who are similarly gendered, differently gendered, and so on. That is, sexual orientation indicates the gendered directionality of attraction, even if that directionality is very inclusive.
  • Some examples of sexual orientation are lesbian, gay, heterosexual, straight, asexual, bisexual, queer, polysexual, and pansexual.
  • Use the umbrella term sexual and gender minorities to refer to multiple sexual and/or gender minority groups, or write about sexual orientation and gender diversity. Abbreviations such as LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA, and LGBTQIA+ may also be used to refer to multiple groups, but be sure that it is representative of the groups about which you are writing.
  • This encompasses not only income but also educational attainment, occupational prestige, and subjective perceptions of social status and social class. It also incorporates quality of life attributes and opportunities afforded to people within society and is a consistent predictor of a vast array of psychological outcomes.
  • When reporting socioeconomic status, provide as much detailed information as possible about people's income, education, and occupations or employment circumstances.
  • Avoid using broad, pejorative, and generalizing terms. Specifically, negative connotations are associated with terms such as homeless, ghetto, and poverty-stricken. Instead, use specific, person-first language such as people experiencing homelessness or people who are homeless rather than homeless.
  • Biases around economic and occupational status can result from deficit-based language that blames individuals for their occupational, educational, or economic situation rather than recognizing a broader societal context that influences individual circumstances.