Citing Web Resources
APA: Citing Web Resources from Lawrence W. Tyree Library on Vimeo: View a transcript here.
In this tutorial, you will learn the basics for citing a web page, a blog post, and what you should do if you are missing a date.
Every APA reference needs four parts: author, date, title, and source. As you go through these examples, you will learn how to identify these four parts and how to place and format them into a proper APA reference.
Example 1: A Webpage
For the first example, you will learn how to cite a webpage. The first step is to identify who wrote the content. In this example, the author is Ashley Strickland.
To list a specific author, write the last name, a comma, and the initials, followed by a period.
Example:
Strickland, A.
Next, identify when this webpage was published. Dates are usually found near the top or the bottom of the page. Do not use a general copyright date for an overall website.
Unless an item is a newspaper, newsletter, magazine article, or blog post, you only need to provide the year. Since this example is an online news article, you should provide the whole date. After the author, list the entire date in parentheses, starting with the year, a comma, and then the month and day. End with a period.
Example:
Strickland, A. (2019, November 19).
Next, identify the title of the page. The title will usually be above the text, in a larger size font.
List the title of the page in italics after the date. Make sure you only capitalize the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, which comes after a colon, and any proper nouns. End with a period.
Example:
Strickland, A. (2019, November 19). Neptune's moons perform a strange orbit dance around each other.
The last information you need is the source For webpages, this is the website title and the URL, or Web address. In this case, the website is CNN. If you are having trouble locating the name of the website, try looking at the URL, which is located in the address bar at the top of the browser.
The title of the website is listed after the title of the webpage, with a period at the end. Type the website title, a period, and then the URL. There is no period after the URL. This completes your reference.
Example:Strickland, A. (2019, November 19). Neptune's moons perform a strange orbit dance around each other. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/world/neptune-moons-orbit-scn-trnd/index.html
If you refer to a work in your paper, either by directly quoting, paraphrasing, or by referring to main ideas, you will need to include an in-text parenthetical citation. There are a number of ways to do this. In this example, a signal phrase is used to introduce a direct quote. Note that the author's name is given in the text, and the publication date and location are enclosed in parentheses at the beginning and end of the sentence. Since there are no page numbers, you should describe where the information is located, either by paragraph number or section.
Example:
Strickland (2019) explains that "Naiad is in a tilted, varying orbit that resembles an oddly zigzagging pattern" (para. 2).
Example 2: No Date
Sometimes a webpage may not provide all the information you need for a citation. This example shows how to cite a webpage with no date. Start with the author. While resources are often written by specific people, sometimes an entire organization is the author. In this case, Santa Fe College is the author. Most webpages with no personal author will have an organizational author.
For organizational authors, simply list the name of the organization, capitalizing all important words. Because there is no date, use the abbreviation n.d. in place of a year. This stands for no date.
Example:
Santa Fe College. (n.d.).
Next, find the title and the source for this webpage.
Type the title of the webpage in italics and end with a period. Since the website title is the same as the author, this component can be omitted.
Example:
Santa Fe College. (n.d.). History of the college.Santa Fe College.
Finally, add the URL. Do not include a period at the end. This concludes the reference.
Example:
Santa Fe College. (n.d.). History of the college. https://www.sfcollege.edu/about/history-of-the-college/index
For in-text citations with no date, use the abbreviation n.d.
Example:
Santa Fe College (n.d.) states that “community colleges are a uniquely American creation” (para. 2).
Example 3: A Blog Post
Blog posts are cited similarly to webpages. You will need to identify the author of the post, the title of the post, the blog name, date, and URL.
Assemble your citation components in the same order as the previous examples. The only difference in the formatting is that the title of the blog is italicized, and the title of the blog post is not. You will also want to include the entire date.
Example:
Kaplan, H. (2017, October 4). Lumia: The art of light. Eye Level. https://americanart.si.edu/blog/eye-level/2017/04/56195/lumia-art-light
Source
This page is excerpted from APA: Citing Web Resources from Lawrence W. Tyree Library.
