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APA Referencing

Webpages

 

 

With a Named Person as Author

Example: web page where you can identify a personal author. Scroll down for further examples.

 

Template

Author(s). (Year). Title of webpage. URL

 

Reference:

Ajzen, I. (n.d.). Theory of Planned Behaviour. https://people.umass.edu/aizen/tpb.html

 

The citation in your text will be:

(Ajzen, n.d.)

If a direct quote, you will not usually be able to give a page number, unless it is a PDF document. Instead you should give another means of enabling the reader to locate the quote, such as a paragraph number or name of section.

If you have used the author's name in your sentence then only the year of publication, with a page reference if necessary, is placed after it in brackets, eg

Mulvey (2006) suggests that ...


Other Examples and Questions

 

News webpage with no specific author of page

Because this is a news site, the exact date of the article is given on the page as well as in the reference.

Reference:

BBC News. (2019, November 25). M&S Christmas advert: Is dancehall culture getting the credit it deserves? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-50536970

Citation:

(BBC News, 2019)… or …BBC News (2019)…

News webpage with named author of page, on a wider website

Note that the article’s title is in italics, while the name of the website hosting it is not in italics. In the example above, because the website as a whole was author rather than an individual, it was omitted to prevent repetition.

Reference:

Shah, D. (2019, November 25). What we can all learn from this deathbed photo. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50550018

Citation:

(Shah, 2019)….. or ….Shah (2019)…

Website with no apparent author, and no date

Where there is no author given for a source, in APA format, the title moves to the author position.

Reference:

European Social Survey. (n.d.). https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

Web page where there is no date and you cannot identify a personal author, but is associated with named organisation

Reference:

University of Leipzig, Department of Psychology. (n.d.). History of Psychology in Leipzig, Germany. http://psychologie.biphaps.uni-leipzig.de/hist_eng.html

Citation:

(University of Leipzig, Department of Psychology, n.d.)

 

Web page where you cannot identify a personal author but there is date

Reference:

University of Florida, College of Medicine. (2017). Patient care. http://www.med.ufl/edu/patients/index/shtml

Citation:

(University of Florida, College of Medicine, 2017)

 

Should I use Wikipedia as one of my references?

No. It is not regarded as an academic resource and you could lose marks. Find another source for the point you are making. If you are unsure how to find suitable journal articles why not reserve a place on one of our library research skills sessions.

 

What about referencing blog posts, podcasts, online videos, etc.?

There are separate styles for referencing other types of online source such as blog posts, podcast episodes, and YouTube videos. See the examples in the relevant Examples: A-Z pages.