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APA Citation Guide (APA 7th Edition): Newspaper Articles

How Can I Tell if it's a Newspaper?

Newspaper sections spread out on a table, Image from flickr, user NS Newsflash

Photo from Flickr, created by user NS Newsflash. Available under a Creative Commons license.

Not sure whether your article is from a newspaper? Look for these characteristics:

  • Main purpose is to provide readers with a brief account of current events locally, nationally or internationally.
  • Can be published daily, semiweekly or weekly.
  • Articles are usually written by journalists who may or may not have subject expertise.
  • Written for the general public, readers don't need any previous subject knowledge.
  • Little, if any, information about other sources is provided.

Articles may also come from journals or magazines.

Formatting

Note: For your Reference list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.

A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.

Tips

Authors/Editors

An author can be a person but can also be an organization, or company. These are called group or corporate authors.

City of Newspaper

If the name of the city in which the newspaper is published is not evident from the title of the newspaper then provide the city in square brackets after the title of the newspaper.

E.g., When citing the Toronto Star, it is evident that the newspaper is published in Toronto. However, if citing The Gazette, it is not evident from the title that it is published in Montreal, so include [Montreal] after writing The Gazette.

Dates

The format of all dates is: Year, Month Date. E.g. 2012, September 5.

Titles

Only capitalize the first letter of the title and subtitle.

If there is a colon (:) in the title, include what comes after the colon (also known as the subtitle).

Newspaper Article

Author's Last Name, First Initial. (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of article: Subtitle if any. Name of Newspaper [city of newspaper if city name not in name]. Section and page number, if given. 

Note: If the author's name is not listed, begin the citation with the title of the article.

Reference List Example

Schmidt, S. (2010, March 10). Companies fail the test; Junk food marketing aimed at kids faulted. The Gazette [Montreal], A11. 

 Note: If an article ends with a question mark or exclamation mark (!), you do not need to add a period to mark the end of the title.

In-Text Citation Example

 

Parenthetical:

(Author's Last Name, Year)

(Schmidt, 2010)

Narrative:

Author's Last Name (Year)

Schmidt (2010)

 Note: If there is no author listed, the in-text citation would include the  title of the article in quotation marks, e.g. ("Companies fail the test").

Newspaper Article From a Website

Author's Last Name, First Initial.  (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of article: Subtitle if any. Name of Newspaper. URL. 

 Note: If the author's name is not listed, begin the citation with the title of the article.

Reference List Example

Morrison, M. (2011, June 23). TSX recovers on Greece news. Toronto Star.  https://www.thestar.com/business/economy/2011/06/23/tsx_recovers_on_greece_news.html. 

 Note: This entry has no page numbers, so this information is left out of the citation.
In-Text Citation Example

Parenthetical:

(Author's Last Name, Year)

(Morrison, 2011)

Narrative: 

Author's Last Name (Year)

Morrison (2011)