What has changed from APA 6th edition (2009) to the new APA 7th edition (2020)?
This is not intended to be a complete list of all of the changes, but this page provides a general summary of the major changes between the 6th edition and the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
- There are now some separate guidelines for student papers and professional papers.
- There are major changes in the formatting of the title page and header.
- The header for a student paper requires only a page number on the left side.
- The 6th edition only allowed Times New Roman (size 12) while the 7th edition allows a variety of fonts and font sizes.
- Titles are now bolded on the title page and the first page of the main body (for student papers).
- Only one space is now needed at the end of a sentence.
- APA has now endorsed the use of the singular, gender-neutral pronoun "they."
Here are some of the changes in the formatting of reference citations:
- "References" or "Reference" is bolded at the top of the page.
- A location is no longer required when citing published physical materials.
- Articles that are assigned a DOI should include the DOI at the end of the citation in the link format. A DOI number can be transformed into a DOI link by visiting doi.org. (Almost all scholarly articles have a DOI [Digital Object Identifier].)
- Articles retrieved from databases that do not have a DOI no longer require the "retrieved from" URL unless that article is only available in that specific database.
- Web resources require a URL, but no longer require the phrase "Retrieved from" unless a retrieval date is needed (for sources that are updated frequently).
- Titles of webpages are now italicized.
