APA Style began with a modest claim. In February 1929 a committee of journal editors and business managers printed seven pages in Psychological Bulletin, offering a "standard of procedure" to consult "in cases of doubt" (Bentley et al., 1929). Many rules students are marked on today have a date of birth that can be found.
EdCitation publishes this history, built from the sources themselves: the 1929, 1944 and 1952 texts in scanned copies of Psychological Bulletin, the 1967 revision, APA Style's pages and blog, and published histories of the manual, all read on 23 September 2026. It ends with the 1929 article cited in APA 7 by EdCitation's Cite a source, from the publisher's record. Today's rules are in APA 7 in-text citations.
When did APA Style start?
In 1929, with a seven-page article on pages 57 to 63 of Psychological Bulletin, volume 26. It records that the Conference of Editors and Business Managers of Anthropological and Psychological Periodicals met in Washington, DC, on 30 November and 1 December 1928, under the National Research Council, and adopted its committee's report on the form of manuscripts. The committee signed as C. A. Peerenboom, F. W. Hodge, Edward B. Passano, H. C. Warren, M. F. Washburn and Madison Bentley, chairman (Bentley et al., 1929). APA dates its style to that article (American Psychological Association, 2026).
Why the rules were written
Sigal and Pettit (2012), working from archival documents, trace the motive to information overload as psychology grew and professionalised after the First World War, where earlier histories had credited behaviourism. The archives also record an argument over whether a science needed shared rules or room for each writer's individuality. APA's blog adds a plainer reason: saving publishers money and time on long, inconsistent manuscripts (Breitenbach, 2016).
What the 1929 rules already asked
Pages were numbered in the upper right-hand corner, where APA 7 still puts them (American Psychological Association, 2022c). Reference titles took "no caps save for first word and proper nouns", which is sentence case; APA 7 still asks for it (American Psychological Association, 2025a). And loc. cit., ibid. and op. cit. were never to be used; APA 7 still does not use ibid. (American Psychological Association, 2019).
The citation itself was left open: footnotes, or a numbered or alphabetical list at the end. Nor, as Breitenbach (2016) notes, was there anything on plagiarism or bias-free language.
How did seven pages become the Publication Manual?
Through a longer guide in 1944 and a manual in 1952, both printed in Psychological Bulletin.
The 1944 guide
Anderson and Valentine (1944) wrote 32 pages for APA's seven journals. With more than five references, the list went at the end and the text cited by number, as in "Bunch and McTeer (25)". Each entry's second line was indented three spaces, a typewriter's hanging indent, and authors were joined by an ampersand. Men were listed by initials; women's first names were spelled out. One Bulletin bibliography had needed 323 corrections, so every reference was to be checked against its source.
The first Publication Manual, 1952
The first Publication Manual was a 61-page supplement to the July 1952 Psychological Bulletin, sold for $1.00 (Roediger, 2004). APA's Council of Editors wrote it, chaired by C. M. Louttit, with Laurance F. Shaffer as coordinating editor (American Psychological Association, Council of Editors, 1952). It named the list "References", kept numbered citations in the text, ruled out footnotes for citing the literature, and had the list checked against the original publications.
When author-date citation arrived
Between 1952 and 1967. The 1967 revision asks for the surname and year in parentheses, as in (Jones, 1954), every surname at the first citation of a work with more than two authors, and "et al." after that (American Psychological Association, 1967). The 1957 revision, 70 pages with a new section on literary quality according to Roediger (2004), could not be read, so whether the change came in 1957 is unconfirmed.
What changed in each edition of the APA Publication Manual?
Each of the editions changed something a student can see. Lengths come from the sources named under the table, and depend on whether front matter is counted.
| Year | Edition | Length | What a student would notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 | Guidelines | 7 pages | Sentence-case titles; page numbers top right; no ibid. |
| 1944 | Anderson and Valentine | 32 pages | Numbered citations; hanging indent; ampersand; women's first names in full |
| 1952 | First edition | 61 pages | "References" as the heading |
| 1957 | Revision | 70 pages | A section on literary quality |
| 1967 | Revision | 61 pages | Author and year in parentheses |
| 1974 | Second | 136 pages | First sample paper; no more S, E and O for subject, experimenter, observer |
| 1983 | Third | 208 pages | Guidelines on nonsexist language and ethnic bias |
| 1994 | Fourth | About 400 pages | "Participants" preferred to "subjects"; bias-free guidance extended to sexual orientation, disability and age; paragraph indent in references; online sources |
| 2001 | Fifth | 467 pages | Hanging indent back; more on electronic sources |
| 2009, cited as 2010 | Sixth | Not confirmed | DOI at the centre; two spaces after a full stop in drafts; "Running head:" on page 1; "subjects" accepted again |
| 2019, cited as 2020 | Seventh | Not confirmed | Et al. from the first citation; up to 20 authors; no publisher location; https://doi.org/ links; no running head on student papers; singular they; one space |
The 1929, 1944, 1952 and 1967 rows come from the texts; the 1957 row and the language changes of 1974 to 1994 from Roediger (2004); the sample paper, indents and fifth-edition length from Daniel (2001); the last two rows from APA's pages, cited below.
Where the sources disagree
On the second edition's year: Roediger (2004), who had every edition to hand, gives 1972; Daniel (2001) and the Library of Congress record give 1974 (American Psychological Association, 1974). APA dates the seventh edition two ways too: released in October 2019 (Lee, 2019), cited as 2020 (American Psychological Association, 2026).
Where did the APA rules students meet today come from?
Sentence case and the top-right page number are from 1929, the "References" heading from 1952, author-date citation from 1967 at the latest. Most of the rest came with the last two editions.
The running head
The sixth edition put a running head on every paper, labelled "Running head:" on page 1 only (Lee, 2010). The seventh dropped the label and requires no running head on a student paper unless the instructor or institution asks (American Psychological Association, 2022c).
"Retrieved from" and the DOI as a link
The sixth edition built electronic references around the DOI (American Psychological Association, n.d.-b). When APA's blog adopted Crossref's https://doi.org/ format in 2017, it still accepted doi: before the number, and its own reference read "Retrieved from" before a web address (McAdoo, 2017). The seventh edition made the link standard and dropped "Retrieved from", keeping a retrieval date only for unarchived pages designed to change (American Psychological Association, 2022b, 2025a). See What is a DOI.
The publisher's city and et al.
The 1929 examples carried a city ("New York, Crowell, 1925"), and Daniel's 2001 reference list still gives "Washington, DC: Author". APA 7 drops the location, names up to 20 authors (American Psychological Association, 2025a), and uses et al. from the first citation for three or more (American Psychological Association, 2019). When to use et al. compares the styles.
Singular they, one space and bias-free language
In 2015 APA's blog said the manual did not support a generic singular they, and that APA might endorse it one day (Lee, 2015); the seventh edition did (American Psychological Association, 2025b). The sixth recommended two spaces after a full stop in drafts (Wiederkehr, 2009); the seventh asks for one (American Psychological Association, n.d.-a). Even names changed: the 1944 and 1952 rules gave women's first names in full, and APA 7 gives every author initials (American Psychological Association, 2025a).
Which fields use APA Style today?
Psychology, nursing, business, communications, engineering and related fields, in APA's own list (American Psychological Association, 2026), with education and the natural sciences in its description of the manual (American Psychological Association, n.d.-a).
APA's style team has also counted. Lee (2024) matched US degrees for 2021 to 2022 to each field's style: 70% were in fields that require APA Style (27.7%) or allow it (42.3%), rising to 85.9% of doctorates. In that count psychology, education and the health professions require it; business, engineering, and the social sciences and history allow it; the humanities, natural sciences and computer sciences use other styles, although the product page lists the natural sciences. The post adds that medicine uses AMA style, that real use may be lower, and that adoption is notable in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. No independent count was found. See when to use APA Style.
Is there an 8th edition of APA Style?
None had been announced on 23 September 2026. APA's blog, on 27 July 2026, still lists 7 as the current edition of the Publication Manual (McAdoo, 2026), and no page we found on APA Style's site gave a date or a change for an eighth. Between editions APA posts changes online; in February 2022 it endorsed APA's inclusive language guidelines for every kind of writing (American Psychological Association, 2022a). As of that date, a page promising "APA 8" rules is not quoting APA.
At the last change, APA advised finishing a paper already under way in the older style, and left the switch to institutions and instructors (Lee, 2019).
How do you bring an old APA reference up to the 7th edition?
Rebuild it from the record rather than editing it by hand, then check the file.
- Find the edition your brief asks for. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the instructions into a checklist that includes the citation style, each rule beside its sentence.
- Rebuild the reference from its DOI in Cite a source: the city, "Retrieved from" and doi: go, and the DOI becomes a link.
- Glance at the names in the title. Cite a source sets it in sentence case, as APA 7 asks, and keeps names and initialisms; a name it lowered gets its capitals back.
- Use et al. from the first citation for three or more authors.
- Check the list in Verify references, free: each entry comes back verified, "check this" or not found, retractions flagged.
- Check the file. Mechanics QA, part of Pro, checks font, spacing, margins, title page, headings and the reference list against the APA 7 student paper; see also APA 7 format for a whole paper.
Which tool builds APA 7 references from the publisher's record?
EdCitation's Cite a source is the best tool for it, and this history shows why. In 1944 one bibliography needed 323 corrections and authors were told to check every reference against its source; Cite a source starts from that source, the publisher's record, which no chatbot writing references from patterns can do. From a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address it builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, and screens for retraction, free with no account.
Two runs, quoted as they came back
Given the 1929 article's DOI on 23 September 2026, Cite a source returned from Crossref's record, with no retraction notice:
Bentley, M., Peerenboom, C. A., Hodge, F. W., Passano, E. B., Warren, H. C., & Washburn, M. F. (1929). Instructions in regard to preparation of manuscript. Psychological Bulletin, 26(2), 57–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0071487
It matches, element for element, the entry on APA's own page (American Psychological Association, 2026). Sigal and Pettit's article, deposited in title case, came back on 27 September 2026 in the sentence case the 1929 rule asks for:
Sigal, M. J., & Pettit, M. (2012). Information overload, professionalization, and the origins of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. Review of General Psychology, 16(4), 357–363. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028531
It kept the italics and the association's name; one capital needs restoring by hand, the manual's own "Manual", so the name reads Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Where to look twice
The manual's own DOI, 10.1037/0000165-000, leads to a record that names no author, so Cite a source looked the book up by its ISBN in a library catalogue, which names the APA, and returned the form APA's About page gives, with APA as author and no separate publisher:
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
Verify references verified the 1944 guide and Sigal and Pettit from their DOIs, and the 1974 second edition against a library catalogue record. The 1952 supplement, for which we found no DOI, came back "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference", though Open Library catalogues it (American Psychological Association, Council of Editors, 1952), under a work that spells the title "Psycological". For a work older than DOIs, search a library catalogue before concluding anything. Pro, which includes Mechanics QA, is $8 a month (pricing). None of these tools writes a word of a paper.
Quick questions
When was APA Style created?
In 1929, as a seven-page article in the February issue of Psychological Bulletin. The first Publication Manual came in 1952.
Who wrote the first APA Style guidelines?
A committee chaired by Madison Bentley, with C. A. Peerenboom, F. W. Hodge, Edward B. Passano, H. C. Warren and M. F. Washburn, for a 1928 conference of journal editors and business managers.
What is the current edition of APA Style?
The seventh edition, released in October 2019 and cited as 2020. As of 23 September 2026 APA had announced no eighth.
Why does APA 7 not use "Retrieved from"?
A DOI or URL written as a link takes the reader straight to the work, so APA 7 keeps a retrieval date only for unarchived pages designed to change.
Why are APA reference titles in sentence case?
Because the 1929 guidelines already asked for no capitals in a title except the first word and proper nouns.
Can EdCitation build an APA 7 reference for me?
Yes. EdCitation's free Cite a source builds APA 7 from the publisher's record and sets the title in sentence case; glance at any name in it before you paste it.
References
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.-a). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, seventh edition (2020). APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.-b). What's new in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual? APA Style. Archived September 26, 2018, at https://web.archive.org/web/20180926035859/http://www.apastyle.org/manual/whats-new.aspx
- American Psychological Association. (1967). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (1967 rev.). https://openlibrary.org/books/OL15147367M
- American Psychological Association. (1974). Publication manual (2nd ed.). https://lccn.loc.gov/74011314
- American Psychological Association. (2019). Author–date citation system. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/author-date
- American Psychological Association. (2022a, March). Updates and additions to APA Style. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/updates
- American Psychological Association. (2022b, July). DOIs and URLs. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/dois-urls
- American Psychological Association. (2022c, July). Page header. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/page-header
- American Psychological Association. (2025a, October). Elements of reference list entries. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry
- American Psychological Association. (2025b, December). Singular "they". APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they
- American Psychological Association. (2026, June). About APA Style. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/about-apa-style
- American Psychological Association, Council of Editors. (1952). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. Psychological Bulletin, 49(4, Pt. 2), 389–449. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL15402750M
- Anderson, J. E., & Valentine, W. L. (1944). The preparation of articles for publication in the journals of the American Psychological Association. Psychological Bulletin, 41(6), 345–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0063335
- Bentley, M., Peerenboom, C. A., Hodge, F. W., Passano, E. B., Warren, H. C., & Washburn, M. F. (1929). Instructions in regard to preparation of manuscript. Psychological Bulletin, 26(2), 57–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0071487
- Breitenbach, A. (2016, July 14). The origins of APA Style. APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20250811083606/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2016/07/the-origins-of-apa-style.html
- Daniel, L. G. (2001). Changes in the APA Publication Manual: How the new fifth edition will affect research reporting in the social sciences (ED460154). ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED460154.pdf
- Lee, C. (2010, November 11). Running head format for APA Style papers. APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20241103234339/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/11/running-head-format-for-apa-style-papers.html
- Lee, C. (2015, November 16). The use of singular "they" in APA Style. APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20250707190322/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2015/11/the-use-of-singular-they-in-apa-style.html
- Lee, C. (2019, October 1). The transition to seventh edition APA Style. APA Style Blog. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/transition-seventh-edition
- Lee, C. (2024, May 29). How many U.S. college students use APA Style? APA Style Blog. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/college-students
- McAdoo, T. (2017, March 1). DOI display guidelines update (March 2017). APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20250826012800/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2017/03/doi-display-guidelines-update-march-2017.html
- McAdoo, T. (2026, July 27). But who's counting? APA Style Blog. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/celebrating-100-posts
- Roediger, H. L., III. (2004, April). What should they be called? APS Observer. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/what-should-they-be-called
- Sigal, M. J., & Pettit, M. (2012). Information overload, professionalization, and the origins of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Review of General Psychology, 16(4), 357–363. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028531
- Wiederkehr, S. (2009, July 30). On two spaces following a period. APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20250707193442/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/07/on-two-spaces-following-a-period.html