APA 7th Edition: Key Changes Every Student Should Know

If you learned APA from an older guide, a senior student’s template, or a half-remembered undergraduate course, you are probably following at least a few 6th edition habits that now read as errors. The 7th edition has been the standard since late 2019, and nursing programs grade against it. Here are the changes that actually show up in nursing coursework, and the details instructors check first.

In-text citations got shorter

The biggest daily change: for any source with three or more authors, cite the first author followed by “et al.” from the very first citation. The old 6th edition dance of listing all authors the first time is gone. Two-author sources still cite both names every time.

Reference list changes worth memorizing

• Up to 20 authors are now listed in a reference entry before truncating with an ellipsis, up from seven.
• Publisher location is gone. Book references now end with the publisher name; no more city and state.
• DOIs are formatted as links, in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx, with no “DOI:” label.
• “Retrieved from” is dropped before most URLs; you only add a retrieval date for sources designed to change, like a database dashboard.

Student papers have their own format

APA 7 formally split student and professional papers. Student papers no longer require a running head or an abstract unless your instructor asks for them, and the title page is simpler: title in bold, your name, affiliation, course, instructor, and date. Your syllabus outranks the manual, so when a program specifies its own template, follow it.

Fonts are flexible now

Times New Roman 12 is no longer the only citizen. APA 7 accepts several fonts including Calibri 11, Arial 11, and Georgia 11. Consistency matters more than the choice, and again, your program’s preference wins if it states one.

Heading levels are cleaner

All five heading levels are now bold with title case, distinguished by placement and italics. In practice, most student papers only need levels one and two: level one centered bold, level two flush-left bold. Getting these two right covers the vast majority of graded formatting.

Language guidance caught up with practice

APA 7 formally endorses the singular “they” and expands bias-free language guidance: person-first phrasing such as “person with diabetes,” specific age ranges instead of vague labels, and exact, respectful identity terms. For nursing students this is a happy alignment, because it mirrors the person-centered language your clinical documentation already expects.

The three errors instructors still see most

Across thousands of papers, the same 7th edition mistakes keep appearing: listing every author in-text for three-plus author sources, including publisher locations in references, and labeling DOIs with “DOI:” instead of formatting them as links. Fix those three habits and your reference list instantly looks current.

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