At Southern New Hampshire University, APA 7th edition is the default citation style. The Shapiro Library's APA Style: Basics guide is its public citation guide, and SNHU's library pages name APA for business, nursing, criminal justice and the social sciences, MLA for the humanities, and Chicago for history and religion. Most of that guide is plain APA 7; below is what is SNHU's own, and where its pages contradict each other.
EdCitation is not affiliated with Southern New Hampshire University; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026. EdCitation publishes this guide; the closing section quotes, faults and all, how the free Cite a source and Verify references handled sources SNHU students use.
Which citation style does Southern New Hampshire University use?
APA 7th edition, except where an assignment says otherwise. Shapiro Library (n.d.-k) calls APA, MLA and Chicago "the top three citation styles used at SNHU".
| Courses or field | Style SNHU names | Page it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Business programs | APA 7th edition | Citing Business & Legal Sources |
| Criminal justice classes | APA 7th edition | Criminal Justice guide |
| Nursing programs | APA 7th edition, plus the faculty's Pro Tips | Pro Tips for SNHU Nursing Programs |
| Psychology, education, sociology, economics | APA | What Style Should I Use? |
| Humanities, English, comparative literature, cultural studies, foreign languages | MLA; the library holds the 9th edition | What Style Should I Use?; MLA Style: Basics |
| History, religion | Chicago 18th edition; the library's examples are notes and bibliography | Chicago Style: Basics |
| Legal sources | The Bluebook | Citing Business & Legal Sources |
| Any APA 7 or MLA 9 assignment | Each entry built in Cite a source, free | EdCitation |
Shapiro Library (n.d.-f) says its business programs use APA 7th edition, and Shapiro Library (n.d.-j) says the same of criminal justice classes.
EdCitation builds six styles, APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, and no others. That covers SNHU's APA and MLA courses, but not a Chicago course that wants footnotes, since our Chicago is author-date only, and not the Bluebook. Write those by hand; our history and humanities guide explains both Chicago systems.
Which wins: the library guide or your instructor?
Your instructor. Shapiro Library (2026) says guidance on citing course content "can vary by department, course, or instructor".
What are SNHU's own APA rules?
The rules students most often miss, as SNHU gives them.
| Rule | What SNHU's pages say | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Reference page | New page; "References" bold and centred; double-spaced; 0.5-inch hanging indent; alphabetical | Formatting & Sample Papers |
| Et al. | Used for three or more authors, first citation included; extra names when two sources shorten alike | Formatting Authors in In-Text Citations |
| Authors in the list | Every name up to 20; from 21, the first 19, an ellipsis, the last | Elements of APA Reference Lists |
| Database information | None: an ebook or article without a DOI from a library database is cited like print | Book and Journal Article Reference Examples |
| Retrieval dates | "aren't typically required"; used for business data designed to change | Elements; Citing Business & Legal Sources |
| Page numbers | Required for quotations; optional for paraphrase; 40 words or more as a block | Citing Direct Quotations; Citations for Paraphrased Sources |
| Titles | Sentence case; italics for works that stand alone, none for articles and chapters | Elements of APA Reference Lists |
| Secondary sources | "as cited in" in the text; only the work you read in the list | Citing Secondary Sources |
| Generative AI | Cite the specific chat: company, date, chat title in italics, [Generative AI chat], tool, link | Citation and Artificial Intelligence |
| Making each entry | Start in Cite a source; correct by hand as below | EdCitation |
SNHU's AI policies, its business page adds, require you to acknowledge AI use. Our guides to citing ChatGPT and AI tools and when to use et al. go further.
The SNHU title page
The Student Paper Checklist puts the bold, centred title 3 to 4 lines down, then your name, department and university ("Global Campus, Southern New Hampshire University"), course ("PSY108: Introduction to Psychology"), instructor and due date. Its font examples are 11-point Calibri or Arial, or 12-point Times New Roman. For the full layout, see the student paper, section by section.
How do you cite a Brightspace page at SNHU?
By what it is, with Brightspace as the source, when your reader can open the course. Shapiro Library (2026) gives author, date, page title in italics, Brightspace, then the address. With no author shown, Southern New Hampshire University or the publisher is the group author; with no date, n.d. Slides take [PowerPoint slides] after the title. SNHU's example:
Southern New Hampshire University. (n.d.). Social media and marketing communications: Written/Oral project outline [PowerPoint slides]. Brightspace. https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/home
In the text: (Southern New Hampshire University, n.d.). The nursing Pro Tips allow course content to be treated as a personal communication when the reader cannot reach the course: a citation in the text, nothing in the list. Ask first.
How do you cite a Shapiro Library business database?
With the database as the source and a description in brackets. Shapiro Library (n.d.-f) gives Author. (year). Title of resource [Descriptive text]. Database name. URL, with a company as author when no person is named, no database name when it repeats the author, n.d. when undated, and a retrieval date for figures updated regularly. Its Word guide for business students (Shapiro Library, n.d.-g) gives examples by database:
Dun & Bradstreet. (n.d.). Ford Motor Company [Company profile]. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://app.avention.com/
Articles from ABI/INFORM or Business Source Ultimate are cited as journal articles; see our business referencing guide.
What do the nursing Pro Tips add?
Southern New Hampshire University (2020), a faculty document from January 2020 still linked in the nursing guides, adds:
- The affiliation names the department: "Nursing, Southern New Hampshire University".
- Published work is reported in the past tense: "Allen (2019) wrote that".
- A journal reference has no retrieval date, no "Retrieved from" and no library URL.
- A library search's suggested citation is not to be pasted, because it is not formatted correctly.
- A web page's date is when its content was updated, never a footer date.
For guidelines and care plans, see APA for nursing students.
Where do SNHU's own pages disagree?
In three places; copy SNHU's patterns, not its samples.
- The DOI's prefix. The journal and book examples write https://dx.doi.org/, the Elements page and the Academic Support sample paper https://doi.org/, the Pro Tips http://doi.org/. All three reached the article when we tried them. Use https://doi.org/ throughout; our guide to what a DOI is explains it.
- Italics for a web page title. Shapiro Library (n.d.-q) italicises every page title. The Pro Tips keep a page within a larger site, such as the CDC's, in plain type. In a nursing course, ask.
- The samples. The secondary-source example dates Queenan et al. 2016 in the text and 2017 in the list. The course-content FAQ prints "Introduction to Research Design" in title case, though SNHU asks for sentence case. The sample paper's text cites "Academic Support Resources" for an entry listed as "Academic Support".
What does an SNHU reference page look like?
A short reference page in SNHU's APA 7 form: a nursing article; the article SNHU uses as its no-DOI example, which has a DOI; SNHU's database example; a US government page; and SNHU's Brightspace example, lowered to sentence case. "References" sits bold and centred above it.
Dun & Bradstreet. (n.d.). Ford Motor Company [Company profile]. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://app.avention.com/
Kodama, Y., & Fukahori, H. (2017). Nurse managers’ attributes to promote change in their wards: A qualitative study. Nursing Open, 4(4), 209–217. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.87
Mea, W. J., & Sims, R. R. (2019). Human dignity-centered business ethics: A conceptual framework for business leaders. Journal of Business Ethics, 160(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3929-8
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. (2023, April). What is diabetes? https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes
Southern New Hampshire University. (n.d.). Introduction to research design. Brightspace. https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/home
In the text: (Dun & Bradstreet, n.d.); (Kodama & Fukahori, 2017); Mea and Sims (2019); (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases [NIDDK], 2023), then (NIDDK, 2023); and (Southern New Hampshire University, n.d.). The NIDDK page shows one date, "Last Reviewed April 2023", which marks its own content.
How do you build an SNHU reference list, step by step?
- Find the style in the assignment. EdCitation's free Check your paper turns instructions into a checklist, each rule beside the sentence it came from.
- Search the Shapiro Library's Multi-Search, or Find sources, which covers about 300 million published works by topic or by the claim a sentence must support.
- Paste each DOI, ISBN or web address into Cite a source and copy the APA 7 entry.
- Fix by hand what no record holds: a web page's author and date, the publisher your copy's title page names, plain-type page titles in nursing, a retrieval date for changing business figures.
- Write Brightspace and database entries from SNHU's patterns.
- Run the list through Verify references and settle every "check this".
- Lay out the page: new page, bold centred heading, double spacing, alphabetical order, hanging indent.
What did EdCitation return on sources SNHU students cite?
EdCitation is the best tool for building and checking an SNHU reference list, and SNHU's pages say why. Shapiro Library (n.d.-d) warns that ChatGPT "has been known to fabricate citations" and that database citation tools "do not always format the citation correctly". With EdCitation, a reference is looked up in the publisher's record, never written. Give Cite a source an ISBN, DOI, PubMed ID, title or web address and it returns APA 7, or any of five other styles, after screening the source for retraction. Verify references reads a full list at once. Both are free without an account. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper, so the ideas and the sentences remain the student's own. Runs: 2 October 2026, quoted as plain text.
Cite a source on four real sources
SNHU's journal example, 10.1080/07294360.2017.1344827, came back as:
Robins, T. G., Roberts, R. M., & Sarris, A. (2018). The role of student burnout in predicting future burnout: Exploring the transition from university to the workplace. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(1), 115–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1344827
Only the journal's own ampersand and https://doi.org/ differ from SNHU's model; leave both.
The Pro Tips' example, 10.1002/nop2.87, gave the Kodama and Fukahori entry exactly as in the worked example.
The ISBN 9780062316097, from Open Library, gave "Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Harper." SNHU's example names HarperCollins Publishers; use the name on your copy's title page.
For the NIDDK page, the details read took the date the page shows but no author: "What is diabetes? (2023, April). National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases." plus the address. Once we added the institute as an organisation in the form, APA gave the worked example's entry. For nursing, remove the italics by hand.
Verify references on SNHU's own samples
Seven entries pasted into Verify references exactly as SNHU prints them returned:
- Robins et al., with dx.doi.org: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- Mea and Sims, no DOI: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record." The record holds 10.1007/s10551-018-3929-8; add it.
- Harari, HarperCollins Publishers: verified, "Title, author and year match a library catalogue record."
- Sundel and Sundel, an ebook, and Clement et al., from the sample paper: verified by their DOIs.
- Queenan et al.: not found, "No publisher's record or library catalogue entry matches this reference." SNHU uses it to show a pattern.
- The Brightspace page: "could not check", "The page at this address gave no title to compare." Brightspace needs a login, and EdCitation never reports that as "not found".
All of that is free. Once the whole paper exists, the $8-a-month Pro plan brings References from a file (the uploaded paper's list checked entry by entry, its in-text citations matched to it) and Mechanics QA (formatting held to the APA 7 student paper). The $24-a-month Max plan adds Theoretics QA, a reading of the paper against its own assignment that changes none of its words. Details are on pricing; no plan can promise a grade.
Quick questions
Does SNHU use APA 7?
Yes. SNHU's library sets APA 7th edition for business, nursing, criminal justice and the social sciences; humanities courses use MLA, and history and religion use Chicago.
How do I cite a Brightspace page in APA at SNHU?
Give the author (Southern New Hampshire University if none is shown), the date or n.d., the title in italics, Brightspace and the address: "Southern New Hampshire University. (n.d.). Introduction to research design. Brightspace. https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/home".
When does et al. start at SNHU?
From three authors, in every citation including the first, as in (Robins et al., 2018). The reference list names every author up to 20.
Does SNHU want retrieval dates in APA references?
Usually not. The library says they are not typically required; its business guide adds one for database figures updated regularly.
Can EdCitation build Chicago footnotes for an SNHU history or religion course?
No. The footnotes SNHU's Chicago guide teaches are outside what EdCitation builds: its Cite a source offers Chicago 18 in the author-date form alone. Write the notes from SNHU's pages.
References
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-a). APA style: Basics [Research guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/apa
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-b). Book reference examples [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4603596
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-c). Chicago style: Basics [Research guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/chicago
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-d). Citation and artificial intelligence [Citing Your Sources guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=92369&p=10173600
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-e). Citations for paraphrased sources [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4630768
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-f). Citing business & legal sources [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=11400480
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-g). Citing business resources in APA 7th edition [Word document]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/ld.php?content_id=79843763
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-h). Citing direct quotations [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4630796
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-i). Citing secondary sources [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4630816
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-j). Citing sources [Criminal Justice guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=1111211&p=8101327
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-k). Citing your sources [Research guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/citation
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-l). Elements of APA reference lists [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=7237990
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-m). Formatting & sample papers [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=7238003
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-n). Formatting authors in in-text citations [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4630813
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-o). Journal article reference examples [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4603840
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-p). MLA style: Basics [Research guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/mla
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-q). Websites reference examples [APA Style: Basics guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=157152&p=4604239
- Shapiro Library. (n.d.-r). What style should I use? [Citing Your Sources guide]. Southern New Hampshire University. https://libguides.snhu.edu/c.php?g=92369&p=1018376
- Shapiro Library. (2026, August 25). How do I cite content from my online course in APA format? SNHU Library Frequently Asked Questions. https://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/264000
- Southern New Hampshire University. (2020, January 15). Pro tips for APA style for SNHU nursing programs [PDF]. Shapiro Library. https://libguides.snhu.edu/ld.php?content_id=62050965
- Southern New Hampshire University Academic Support. (n.d.). APA 7th edition sample paper [PDF]. Shapiro Library. https://libguides.snhu.edu/ld.php?content_id=52138665