APA Website Citation – Cite Website Sources Using APA Style

With the advancements of the internet, from time to time there is a lot of information that cannot be easily accessed through regular databases, leading to the need for a proper website citation. Website citation comes in various styles and the most concrete and widely used is the APA website citation format.

The APA Website Citation Style is a guide on how to cite freely accessible web pages that are not generally accessible through regular databases. This style guide is based on the Public Manual of the American Psychological Association. The guide has formats ranging from citing websites in a reference list to citing websites in text.

Basically, the APA website citation, especially the citation of web pages in the reference list, has four elements. These are 1. Author 2. Title of the web page 3. Date of publication and 4. URL or Uniform Resource Locator. These elements play an important role in the successful citation of a web page using the APA website citation format.

Author

The author of the website can usually be found at the bottom or top of the web page. You can easily identify them as they go with phrases like Compiled By, Maintained By, Created By, etc. There are times when no author is available, so you can start citing with the title of the web page.

Web page title

Therefore, the name is the title of the website. But keep in mind that when you cite an article in a group of articles on a specific site, the title of the web page in your citation must be the title of the article plus the name of the website. Please note that the title of the page or document should be italicized in your citation.

Publication date

Commonly, the publication date is found at the bottom of the page. It’s always good to use the date the page or document was last updated. If available, copyright dates would be an ideal publication date. You can also include the month plus day if they can be found on the page. In situations where the publication date is not available, the nd sign, meaning no date, can be placed in the citation.

urls

Since this is a website citation, it is very important to put the URL in your citation. The URL can be found in the address bar at the top of your browser. Transcribe the URL of your citation, but be very careful. The best way to get it is to copy and paste the URL.

Here is a basic citation example using the Citation from the APA website Format:

DeCarlo, M. (2012, July 17). Panda Cloud Antivirus 2.0 offers faster and smarter detection. Tech Spot. Retrieved on July 24, 2012, from http://www. techspot.com/news/49411-panda-cloud-antivirus-20-brings-faster-smarter-detection.html

here’s a citation example format when there no author or no date:

Dinosaur. (North Dakota). Outfit ideas. Retrieved on July 25, 2012, from http://www. costumzee.com/shop/dinosaur

When citing web pages in texts, the author’s name, publication date (usually the year of publication), and page number (if available, say in PDF files) should be cited. In case there are many authors, the citation of several authors is necessary. On the other hand, when an author is missing, the first few words of the title of the web page can be cited.

The basic format for citing websites in text is (Jones, 2010, 5)

In the case of quote from various authors here is the sample format:

(Jones, Ashton, and Mcvoy, 2010, 5)

The need for a proper citation is made easier with proper formatting. Using the Citation from the APA website style, it can surely help you to improve and organize your references and text citations.