# UBC citation style guide: APA 7, MLA and Chicago at UBC

**Which citation style does UBC use, and what are UBC Library's own rules?** The University of British Columbia has no single citation style; the instructor or programme sets it. UBC Library's guides name APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago as the dominant three: APA for psychology, nursing and the social sciences, MLA for English, Chicago or MLA footnotes for history, APA or IEEE for engineering, and COAL-RJAL for law.

Published 2026-10-02 by EdCitation. https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-ubc

The University of British Columbia (UBC) has no single citation style: your instructor or programme sets it, and if nobody does, UBC Library lets you choose one and keep to it. The library's Indigenous Citation Guide calls APA, MLA and Chicago "the dominant three at UBC", and APA is the guide students open most: its counter showed 39,102 views this year against 13,480 for MLA (University of British Columbia Library, 2025d).

EdCitation is not affiliated with The University of British Columbia; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026. EdCitation publishes this guide, and its last sections quote word for word what the free [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) and [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references) returned on real sources and on UBC's own examples, faults included.

## Which citation style does UBC use?

The one your course outline names. When it names none, University of British Columbia Library (2025a) says "it's probably best" to use your discipline's style, and gives psychology APA, history Chicago and English MLA. Department and subject pages add detail:

| Subject or programme | Style UBC's pages name | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Psychology, many social sciences | APA 7 | How to Cite: Major styles |
| English, humanities | MLA 9 | How to Cite: Major styles |
| History | MLA or Chicago, as footnotes or endnotes; APA and CBE "inappropriate" unless the instructor agrees | History Writing Centre |
| Chemistry | ACS | How to Cite: Major styles |
| Engineering | APA or IEEE, as the instructor specifies | Research skills for engineering |
| Nursing | APA 7, through the library's APA guide | Nursing: Citing sources |
| Medical and scientific journals | Vancouver | How to Cite: Major styles |
| Law (Allard School of Law) | COAL-RJAL; the McGill Guide, 10th edition, also listed | Legal Citation Guide |
| UBC Okanagan: chemistry, engineering, law, archaeology | ACS, IEEE, legal citation, SAA | UBC Okanagan Library |
| Any APA, MLA or Chicago author-date entry | [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite), free | EdCitation |

EdCitation builds APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18 author-date only: history footnotes (notes and bibliography) are written by hand, and there is no McGill Guide or COAL-RJAL. For the wider picture, see [referencing at Canadian universities](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-canadian-universities).

### Chicago and Harvard at UBC

UBC tells you to ask your instructor which Chicago system to use; its Chicago guide link now opens the *Chicago Manual of Style Online*, which needs a UBC login (University of British Columbia Library, 2025a). Where author-date is allowed, see our [Chicago author-date guide](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/chicago-author-date-referencing-guide). For Harvard, UBC warns that no authoritative guide exists, so choose one and keep to it; EdCitation's Harvard follows Cite Them Right.

Print manuals wait at the Chapman Learning Commons Help Desk, and the library treats the official manuals as the "final say" (University of British Columbia Library, 2025c). The Learning Commons' own site answered us with a browser check.

## How do you cite at UBC in APA 7?

Follow UBC Library's APA Citation Style Guide, built on the *Publication Manual*, 7th edition:

| Rule | What UBC's APA guide says | Page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Et al. | From three authors, the first author and et al. | Getting started |
| Authors in the list | All up to 20; from 21, the first 19, an ellipsis, the last | Articles |
| Titles | Sentence case, first word after a colon capitalised | Getting started |
| DOIs | Always if provided, else a permanent URL; links live | Articles |
| Database articles | No DOI and from a common database: no URL | Articles |
| Web page dates | The page's own date, never the footer copyright; else n.d. | Webpages |
| Retrieval dates | Only when the content may change | Webpages |
| Site name | Dropped when it matches the group author | Webpages |
| Quotation without pages | A heading or paragraph number, never PDF page numbers | Getting started |
| Title page | Department and university: "School of Nursing, University of British Columbia" | Formatting |
| Font | 12-point Times New Roman, or 11-point Calibri or Arial | Formatting |
| Building an entry | [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa), then the changes below | EdCitation |

### Canvas and personal communications

Lecture slides take the instructor, the date, the title, a format in brackets such as [PowerPoint slides], Canvas and the login page, https://canvas.ubc.ca/ (University of British Columbia Library, 2026c). An article posted to Canvas is cited as the article, with no link. Emails, interviews and unrecorded lectures appear in the text only: University of British Columbia Library (2026h) gives (G. Grinnell, personal communication, September 18, 2019).

### Generative AI

UBC's APA tab follows APA's September 2025 guidance: the company is the author, as in (OpenAI, 2025), and the entry names the tool and model, such as *ChatGPT* (GPT-5) [Large language model]. The same page tells you to verify every source an AI tool gives you (University of British Columbia Library, 2026e). Other styles are in our guide to [citing ChatGPT and AI tools](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/how-to-cite-chatgpt-and-ai-tools).

## How does UBC say to cite Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers?

In the text and in the reference list, by a template UBC labels its recommended practice. University of British Columbia Library (2026g) shares NorQuest College's template, explained by MacLeod (2021): unlike other personal communications, the Elder is cited in the text, (Cardinal, 2004), and listed. The entry gives, in order:

1. Last name and first initial.
2. Nation or community.
3. Treaty territory, if applicable.
4. Where they live, if applicable.
5. The topic, such as an oral teaching.
6. "personal communication" and the date.

UBC's example: Cardinal, D., Goodfish Lake Cree Nation. Treaty 6. Lives in Edmonton. Oral teaching. personal communication. April 4, 2004.

The same page gives APA's official rule: recorded teachings are cited as the book, video or podcast they are in, and a conversation with an Indigenous person who is not a research participant is a personal communication, in the text only, with their name, group, location and date. Use Indigenous knowledge only as community protocol allows, and ask in advance if unsure (University of British Columbia Library, 2025d).

No citation tool can build these entries, EdCitation included: there is no published record to look up.

## Where do UBC's own pages disagree?

In four places, plus slips in sample entries.

- **Elders.** The template (text and list) and APA's rule (text only) share a page; UBC recommends the template.
- **AI.** The AI page opens by treating AI output as akin to personal communication; its APA tab says APA does not count a chat as one. For APA, follow the tab.
- **Retrieval dates.** The webpages page prints "Retrieved April 15, 2020 from", without a comma; the guide's OSF example has "Retrieved April 17, 2020, from", which is APA's form.
- **DOIs and dashes.** The books page builds DOIs on http://dx.doi.org, while most examples use https://doi.org; page ranges are printed with a hyphen where APA's manual uses an en dash.
- **Slips.** Janmaat and Rahimova's subtitle is printed "A roll for" where the article reads "A Role for"; Pither's co-author Maity appears as "Malty"; the Komagata Maru book is 2019 in the list and 2018 in its citations.

Copy UBC's patterns, not its entries; the manual has the final say.

## What does a UBC APA reference list look like?

In exactly the form UBC's APA guide sets out: two articles, an edited book, a Canadian news page, and UBC's own Canvas and Elder examples, each with a hanging indent.

> Cardinal, D., Goodfish Lake Cree Nation. Treaty 6. Lives in Edmonton. Oral teaching. personal communication. April 4, 2004.
>
> Davis, J. (2019, October 10). *Inventory management systems* [PowerPoint slides]. Canvas. https://canvas.ubc.ca/
>
> Dhamoon, R. K., Bhandar, D., Mawani, R., & Bains, S. K. (Eds.). (2019). *Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting colonial trajectories*. UBC Press. https://doi.org/10.59962/9780774860673
>
> Janmaat, J., & Rahimova, N. (2018). Managing drought risk in the Okanagan: A role for dry-year option contracts? *Canadian Public Policy*, *44*(2), 112–125. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2017-003
>
> MacLeod, L. (2021). More than personal communication: Templates for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. *KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies*, *5*(1). https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.135
>
> Matassa-Fung, D. (2019, November 28). *UBC Okanagan study finds dogs boost literacy in young students*. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/6230541/ubc-okanagan-study-dogs-boost-literacy-students/

In the text: (Cardinal, 2004); (Davis, 2019); (Dhamoon et al., 2019); Janmaat and Rahimova (2018), or (Janmaat & Rahimova, 2018); (MacLeod, 2021); (Matassa-Fung, 2019). UBC's example lists the Komagata Maru names as authors; the publisher's record names them as editors, hence "(Eds.)".

## Which EdCitation style is closest, and what do you change by hand?

APA 7. Cite a source takes authors, years, volumes, pages and DOIs from the publisher's record; these are the changes we made by hand on 2 October 2026:

| Cite a source printed, in APA 7 | Change it to, for UBC |
| --- | --- |
| "Retrieved October 2, 2026, from" on a web page | Delete it unless the page is likely to change |
| *Global News* in italics, the article title in roman | The title in italics, Global News in roman |
| citing indigenous elders and knowledge keepers | Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, as the article and UBC write them |
| Unmooring the Komagata maru | Komagata Maru: a ship's name keeps its capital |
| University of British Columbia Press | UBC Press, as UBC's example prints it |
| A ubc.ca page behind a browser check | The real author, title and date, typed into the form |

For MLA courses, choose [MLA 9](https://edcitation.com/cite/mla); for history courses that accept author-date, [Chicago 18 author-date](https://edcitation.com/cite/chicago). Footnotes are written by hand.

## What did Cite a source and Verify references return?

EdCitation is the best free tool for a UBC reference list, because it looks every source up in the publisher's record and never writes one, which no chatbot can promise. UBC Library warns that auto-generated citations "may not be perfectly formatted" (University of British Columbia Library, 2025b); the runs below show exactly what to review. [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver from a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address, lets you correct a web page's details, and screens each source for retraction, free and with no account. EdCitation finds, cites and checks sources, and every sentence of the paper stays the student's own.

### Cite a source on five real sources

For 10.3138/cpp.2017-003, UBC's own example, it returned:

> Janmaat, J., & Rahimova, N. (2018). Managing drought risk in the Okanagan: A role for dry-year option contracts? Canadian Public Policy, 44(2), 112–125. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2017-003

That is UBC's entry with the record's "role". For 10.1371/journal.pone.0173084 it gave "Maity" and "Article e0173084", as UBC asks. For 10.18357/kula.135 it printed, in two runs, "Templates for citing indigenous elders and knowledge keepers"; for 10.59962/9780774860673, the editors with "(Eds.)" but "Komagata maru", also twice. Raise those capitals by hand.

The Global News address gave UBC's entry with the site name, not the title, in italics. UBC's own web example, the Peter Wall Institute's governance page, showed a browser check, so Cite a source answered "That page could not be read. Some sites block automated readers." With the details typed in from UBC's example, it gave "Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. (n.d.). Governance. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://pwias.ubc.ca/about-us/governance": delete the retrieval date. No source was reported retracted.

### Verify references on UBC's own examples

Eight of UBC's sample entries, pasted exactly as printed into [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references), came back five verified, two "check this" and one "could not check", none not found.

- Pither, with "Malty": "The publisher's record also names Maity, who is not in your entry. Check the authors."
- Neumann (2019), without a DOI: "The closest published record differs in its title. Check it is the one meant, and copy the title from it." The record's title begins "Leading the Call:", which UBC's entry leaves out.
- Janmaat, with "roll": verified, noting that the record's title adds "A Role for Dry-Year Option Contracts?", "which your entry leaves out". It is there, misspelt: compare word by word.
- The Peter Wall page: "could not check", "The site at this address asked for a check that a person is reading, so the page could not be read here. Open it and check it is the page meant."

All of that is free. For a whole paper, Pro at $8 a month adds [References from a file](https://edcitation.com/tools/references-from-a-file), which matches every in-text citation to the list, and [Mechanics QA](https://edcitation.com/tools/mechanics-qa), which checks formatting against the APA 7 student paper. Max at $24 a month adds Theoretics QA, which judges a paper against its own assignment and rewrites nothing. See [pricing](https://edcitation.com/pricing). None of it promises a grade.

## How do you build a UBC reference list, step by step?

1. Find the style in the outline; EdCitation's free [Check your paper](https://edcitation.com/check) reads assignment instructions into a checklist, citation style included.
2. Open the matching UBC Library guide: APA, MLA, or the Legal Citation Guide.
3. Build each book, article and web page in [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) from its DOI or address.
4. Make the changes in the table above.
5. Write Canvas material, personal communications and Elder citations from UBC's patterns.
6. Paste the list into [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references) and settle every "check this" against the source.

## Quick questions

### What citation style does UBC use?

None for the whole university. UBC Library's pages give APA 7 to psychology, nursing and the social sciences, MLA to English, MLA or Chicago footnotes to history, APA or IEEE to engineering, and COAL-RJAL to law.

### Where is the UBC Library citation guide?

Start at UBC Library's How to Cite guide; the library also publishes full APA 7 and MLA 9 guides and an Indigenous Citation Guide.

### When does et al. start in UBC's APA guide?

At three authors, from the first citation. The reference list names every author up to 20.

### Can EdCitation build UBC APA citations?

Yes, for published sources: [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) builds APA 7 from the publisher's record, and you make the few changes listed here. It cannot build Elder citations, Chicago footnotes or legal citations.

### How do I cite an Elder at UBC?

By NorQuest's template, UBC's recommended practice: an in-text citation and a list entry with the Nation, treaty territory, place, topic and date. Follow community protocol first.

## References

- Dhamoon, R. K., Bhandar, D., Mawani, R., & Bains, S. K. (Eds.). (2019). *Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting colonial trajectories*. UBC Press. [https://doi.org/10.59962/9780774860673](https://doi.org/10.59962/9780774860673)
- Janmaat, J., & Rahimova, N. (2018). Managing drought risk in the Okanagan: A role for dry-year option contracts? *Canadian Public Policy, 44*(2), 112–125. [https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2017-003](https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2017-003)
- MacLeod, L. (2021). More than personal communication: Templates for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. *KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies, 5*(1). [https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.135](https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.135)
- Matassa-Fung, D. (2019, November 28). *UBC Okanagan study finds dogs boost literacy in young students*. Global News. [https://globalnews.ca/news/6230541/ubc-okanagan-study-dogs-boost-literacy-students/](https://globalnews.ca/news/6230541/ubc-okanagan-study-dogs-boost-literacy-students/)
- UBC Department of History. (n.d.). *History Writing Centre*. University of British Columbia. [https://history.ubc.ca/undergraduate/writing-centre/](https://history.ubc.ca/undergraduate/writing-centre/)
- UBC Okanagan Library. (n.d.). *Citation style guides*. University of British Columbia. [https://library.ok.ubc.ca/guides-and-tools/citation-style-guides/](https://library.ok.ubc.ca/guides-and-tools/citation-style-guides/)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2025a). *How to cite: Major styles*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035495](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035495)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2025b). *How to cite: Troubleshooting and FAQ*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035499](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035499)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2025c). *How to cite: Using style guides*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035492](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=707463&p=5035492)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2025d). *Indigenous citation guide*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/IndigenousCitationGuide](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/IndigenousCitationGuide)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2025e). *Law: Legal citation guide*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/legalcitation/home](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/legalcitation/home)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026a). *APA citation style guide: Articles*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/articles](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/articles)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026b). *APA citation style guide: Books & chapters*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/books](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/books)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026c). *APA citation style guide: Course & LMS resources*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/courses](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/courses)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026d). *APA citation style guide: Formatting your paper*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/formatting](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/formatting)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026e). *APA citation style guide: Generative AI*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=713622&p=5363274](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=713622&p=5363274)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026f). *APA citation style guide: Getting started with APA*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026g). *APA citation style guide: Indigenous Knowledge Keepers*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/indigenousknowledge](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/indigenousknowledge)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026h). *APA citation style guide: Personal communications*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/personal](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/personal)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026i). *APA citation style guide: Webpages & news sites*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/webpages](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/apacitationstyle/webpages)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026j). *Nursing: Citing sources*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/nursing/citing](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/nursing/citing)
- University of British Columbia Library. (2026k). *Research skills for engineering students: How to cite sources*. Research Guides. [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=735355&p=5301357](https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=735355&p=5301357)