APA Referencing

Dictionary entry

Dictionary entry

Template

Author(s) or editor(s) (Year). Title of dictionary (edition, if not first). Publisher

Reference list:

Colman, M. (2015). Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (4th ed). Oxford University Press.

The citation in your text will be:

(Colman, 2015)

or, if you have quoted directly,

(Colman, 2015, p.254).

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.

Colman (2015) defines “attachment” in the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology as ...

or, if you have quoted directly,

Colman (2015, p. 179) defines “attachment” in the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology as “...


Other Examples

Dictionary with no editor, print version

Reference: Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd ed.). (2010). Oxford University Press.

In-text citation: (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2010)

Dictionary (online version), with no editor, no date, edition not shown

In this case the editor or author (which we are not given for this source) is replaced by the dictionary name. Because online dictionaries are regularly updated, the APA Manual suggests giving a retrieval date.

Reference: Dictionary.com (2019). Stramash. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved November 26, 2019 from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stramash?s=t

In-text citation: (Dictionary.com, 2019) or “…according to Dictionary.com (2019), a ‘stramash’ is a disturbance….”

Reference: American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Inferiority complex. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved November 25, 2019 from https://dictionary.apa.org/inferiority-complex

In-text citation: (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.)

APA Dictionary of Psychology, print version, 2nd edition

In this example, no publisher is given because the publisher and author are the same organisation.

Reference: American Psychological Association. (2015). APA Dictionary of Psychology (2nd ed.).

In-text citation: (American Psychological Association, 2015)