Changes to APA Style with 7th Edition

Here are some important differences between APA 6th edition and APA 7th edition.

Running head (section 2.8)

• The running head, when in the context of a classroom, is no longer required by APA but may be requested by individual instructors.

• The label “running head” is no longer needed in the header on the first page.

Title page (section 2.3)

• For students using the 7th edition, the title page should include the title of the work in bold font, the author, the affiliated institution, the course, the instructor, and the due date.

• The title page information should be in the top 1/3 of the page. If double-spacing is set up, you can return down three times and start typing the title. There should be one return between the title and the start of the other information.

Bias-free language (sections 5.1-5.10)

• “They” or “their” is now officially endorsed as a gender neutral pronoun.

• Descriptive phrases are emphasized rather than adjectives to label groups of people, e.g. “people living in poverty” rather than “the poor” or “people with schizophrenia” instead of “schizophrenics.”

• Clarification that “Indian” should not be used to describe Native Americans.

  • While the term “Indians” has long since been used to refer to Native Americans and Indigenous People in the United States, it is outdated and inaccurate, erasing the identities of both Native American and Indian groups.

In-text or parenthetical citations (section 8.11)

• After three or more authors in a parenthetical citation, the writer can begin to use et al. in the first citation.

  • Example, for an article that has four authors, the in-text citation would look as follows:

    • Mobley et al., 2019

      Reference citations (sections 9.1-9.52)

• Surnames and initials for up to 20 authors instead of seven should be provided in the reference list.

  • Increasing the number of authors included in the reference list allows more authors to be recognized for their contributions to the scholarship.

• Reference citations no longer have to include terms “Retrieved from” or “Accessed from” when including URL.

• DOI numbers are now formatted the same as a URL:

  https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1560449.

  Here is an example of a citation in 7th edition APA. Notice that the publisher location is no longer there and that the DOI is now a link:

  American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Research (section 3.6)

Instead of broad categories, using exact age ranges that makes the statements more reliable.

• For example, when conducting surveys, providing a specific age would help differentiate data and make it easier to look for trends.

• Using exact age ranges is especially helpful with research becoming more inclusive to older and younger age groups.

• The National Institute of Health just released new rules for clinical research to be more inclusive to minority groups, seniors, women, and children. Making this change helps to push that culture shift to better research.

Level headers (section 2.27)

• The format of heading levels 3-5 has changed the way they are indented and have changed the usage of bold and italicized fonts. (See APA Level Headings resource)

Fonts (section 2.19)

• The acceptability of fonts has increased to include Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, Lucida Sans Unicode, and Georgia.

Punctuation (section 6.7)

• Use quotations in place of italics when referring to a specific word reference.

  • Example: The participant answered “yes” to question 3.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (Seventh ed.). American Psychological Association.