APA Manual, 6th Edition: Changes and Library Recommendations  

The 6th edition of the APA publications manual has several inconsistencies in their examples, and several editing errors in the first printing of the Manual. 

General Errors: For the errors published within the manual, see APA's list of Corrections to First Printing.

Errors in Sample Papers: There were several editing mistakes in the first printing of the Manual.  If your Manual has a Sample One-Experiment Paper that has the word “Running head” at the top of every page, this is the wrong version.  Instead, please refer to the corrected versions of the sample papers from the APA website.

If you aren't sure how to cite a particular item, and you feel as if the APA Manual confuses rather than clears up the issue, get in touch with your professor and ask them how they would like the resource cited. 

DOIs (In Publication Manual: 7.01.1-5, p. 198-199): The most significant change is how to cite journal articles that have been retrieved from an online source.  Instead of a URL, now writers are to include a DOI, or document object identifier, a unique number associated with the document.  When that is not available, you are expected to include other information about where you got it, in the form of a URL or a database name.  Our recommendations differ slightly from the APA Manual about what to do when a writer has no DOI for a document.  See our recommendations, and an explanation of those recommendations here.

Date Retrieved (In Publication Manual, 6.32, p. 192): A date retrieved for electronic sources is no longer needed unless it is likely to change.  We are recommending that students include a date retrieved for journal articles, to help professors in understanding their research path and locating the materials.

More than seven authors (In Publication Manual: 7.01.2, p. 198): An article with seven or more authors now appears with the first six authors listed, an ellipsis, and the final author.

Gilbert, D.G., McClernon, J.F., Rabinovich, N.E., Sugai, C., Plath, L.C., Asgaard, G.,…Botros, N. (2004).

Well-known city rule (In Publication Manual, 6.31, p. 187): In previous editions, a book citation (or any non-periodical citation) listing a well-known place of publication in the U.S. (New York, Chicago, Boston, etc.) would not need a state following it.  That has now changed: every city listed should also list a state.

 Doe, J. (2009). How to succeed in college. New York, NY: Success Publishing.

More extensive resources:

This is an introduction to only what we consider the most important changes in APA style.  For more extensive information, see the following resources:

Watch a tutorial on the changes published by APA.

Monitor discussions of these and other changes at the APA Style Blog: http://blog.apastyle.org/

Augusta State University has produced a document explaining changes about both reference list production and paper formatting more extensively.  See that document here: http://www.aug.edu/elcse/2010APAGuidelineChanges.pdf