APA Style

Welcome to Centennial's APA (American Psychological Association) Style Library Guide!

The examples in this guide are based on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition.

Our guide for APA Style, 6th edition, is still available!

Download these templates and insert your assignment text.

The APA Style Manual, 7e provides guidance on writing with bias-free language.

APA Style has detailed information on their guidelines for bias-free language.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has summarized the most notable guidelines -- please consult the APA Style Manual, 7e, Chapter 5 for more detailed instructions:

• As a general rule: respect the language that people use to describe themselves, and be aware that language changes over time (what’s acceptable language today may not be acceptable five years from now!)
• Use “person-first language” whenever possible – for example, “a man with epilepsy”, rather than “an epileptic man"
• Avoid using adjectives as nouns when describing groups of people – for example, instead of writing “drug users”, write: “people who use drugs”
• Use specific labels rather than general labels, when possible. For example: “Korean Americans” rather than “Asian Americans”
• When describing differences between groups of people, focus on relevant qualities to what you are writing about. For example: if you are  writing about sex chromosome-linked illnesses, study participants’ biological sexes are probably relevant, while participants’ sexual orientations are probably not
• Use “they” as a singular pronoun, and use “they” when a person’s gender is unknown or irrelevant
  • For example, instead of writing “he or she”, use “they” instead
• Do not anthropomorphize language (apply words we would use for humans to non-humans)

  • For example, use “that” and “which” when referring to animals or objects, rather than “who”

In addition to providing lots of great sources for your assignments, our Library Catalogue will create a References entry for the sources you find.

Once you've done your search and found something that interests you, click on the Cite This Item button in the record:

However, as with any citation generator, you will want to review the citation for any errors before you include the reference in your assignment.

For example, in the citation below, you will see that United States and Canada need to be capitalized, and that the doi needs to be turned into a link.

This video summarizes the most notable changes in the APA Style Manual, 7th edition.

The APA Style manual recommends the following fonts for student papers, due to their wide availability and legibility:

• Sans-serif fonts: 11 point Calibri, 11 point Arial, or 10 point Lucida Sans Unicode
• Serif fonts: 12 point Times New Roman, 11 point Georgia, or normal (10 point) Computer Modern

However, if your instructor requests that you use a different font, use that font!