I'm finishing my master's thesis in psychology and my advisor is very strict about APA style, but I'm constantly getting tripped up on the finer points of in-text citations for sources with multiple authors, especially when citing the same source repeatedly in a paragraph, and the formatting for online datasets or preprints. The manual is dense, and online generators often give conflicting advice. For fellow students or academics who have mastered APA, what are the most common citation pitfalls you see, and what resources or tricks do you recommend for ensuring consistency, particularly with those tricky edge-case sources?
Great topic. A few common APA pitfalls to watch for when you’re juggling sources with multiple authors, repeated citations, and online datasets: 1) For works with three or more authors, APA 7th edition uses et al. in every in-text citation (e.g., (Khan et al., 2021); narrative: Khan et al. (2021) argue...). If you have two authors, use an ampersand in parentheticals (Smith & Doe, 2020) and “Smith and Doe” in narrative form. 2) When you cite the same source across several sentences, include the year in each sentence to avoid confusion, even if it feels repetitive. 3) When citing multiple sources in one sentence, separate with semicolons (Jones et al., 2020; Smith & Doe, 2019). 4) For direct quotes, always include a page or paragraph number. 5) For edge-case sources, know where the information lives in the reference: online datasets, preprints, and non-DOI items each have their own best-practice formats. If you want, I can tailor examples to your field.