How to Use an APA 6th Edition Citation Generator

An APA 6th edition citation generator is the right tool when a journal, a program, or an instructor still requires the 2009 edition, and it is also the easiest tool to misuse, because most generators default to APA 7 and the two editions look almost identical at a glance. The fix is to set the edition before you generate, then check each reference for the handful of elements where APA 6 and APA 7 disagree: publisher location, DOI form, "Retrieved from," ebook versions, and author counts. This guide gives you the APA 6 patterns, the differences to check, and worked corrections for the outputs that go wrong most often.

When you still need APA 6

APA published the 7th edition in 2019, and most courses have moved to it. APA 6 survives in a few places: journals that have not updated their author guidelines, long projects such as theses that started under APA 6 and must stay consistent, programs whose style sheets were never revised, and instructors who simply ask for it. If the assignment says "APA" with no edition, ask. Purdue OWL marks its own APA 6 pages with the note that "this page reflects APA 6, which is now out of date," so the default answer for new work is APA 7, and APA 6 is something you use because someone specified it.

The reverse problem is as common. Plenty of long-running tools and reference-manager templates still produce APA 6 by default, so students submitting APA 7 work hand in 6th edition references without knowing it. Our APA 7 generator guide covers that direction. This post covers the case where APA 6 is what you need.

Set the edition before you generate

A generator does two jobs: it reads metadata (author, year, title, container, DOI, URL) from whatever you paste, and it pours that metadata into a style template. The metadata step is the same for both editions. Only the template differs, so a reference generated in the wrong edition has the right facts in the wrong furniture.

Look for a style menu that names the edition outright, such as "APA 6th edition" or "APA (6th ed.)". A bare "APA" option almost always means APA 7 on a current tool. On AllCitations, APA 6 is its own style at the APA 6th edition generator, separate from APA 7, so the edition is fixed by the page you are on.

Three quick tells show which edition a generated book reference came from. An APA 6 book ends with a city and publisher ("Washington, DC: American Psychological Association"); an APA 7 book ends with the publisher alone. An APA 6 web reference ends with "Retrieved from" and a URL; an APA 7 one ends with the bare URL. And an APA 6 reference with eight or more authors shows six names, an ellipsis, and the last name, where APA 7 lists up to 20.

The APA 6 reference patterns

These patterns and examples come from Purdue OWL's archived APA 6 pages on book references and electronic sources. Italics are lost in a code block: in your paper, italicize book titles and journal names with their volume numbers.

Book:

` Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.

Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. `

Chapter in an edited book:

` Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.

O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer. `

Journal article with a DOI:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume(issue), page range. doi:xx.xxxx

Journal article without a DOI: end with "Retrieved from" and the URL of the journal's home page.

... Title of Periodical, volume(issue), page range. Retrieved from https://www.journalhomepage.com/full/url/

Web page or online document:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of page [Format description when necessary]. Retrieved from https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

Ebook: APA 6 asks you to name the version, and to write "Available from" in place of "Retrieved from" when the book has to be bought.

Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Online video:

... Title of video [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

Purdue adds that a screen name should be spelled and capitalized exactly as it appears.

The DOI line is the one place APA 6 allows two forms. Purdue's template gives "doi:0000000/000000000000 or https://doi.org/10.0000/0000", and Azusa Pacific's library comparison of the editions puts it the same way: in APA 6, "DOIs can be formatted as an URL (https://doi.org/xxx) or the DOI can be without https://." Pick one form and use it for every entry.

What changed between APA 6 and APA 7

Purdue OWL's list of changes in the 7th edition and the Azusa Pacific comparison cover these differences. Each row is something a generator can get wrong if it runs the other edition's template.

Eight checks for every generated APA 6 reference

Run these in order. The first three catch the edition mix-ups, the rest catch metadata problems that no template can fix.

1. Publisher location on every book. APA 6 wants "Location: Publisher". Purdue's examples use a US city with its two-letter state ("New York, NY", "Chicago, IL"). If the field is missing, the generator's source metadata had no place of publication, so take it from the book's title page or copyright page.
2. One DOI form throughout. Either every DOI starts doi: or every DOI starts https://doi.org/. Mixed forms show up when references come from different tools.
3. "Retrieved from" before URLs. An APA 6 web reference that ends in a bare URL came from an APA 7 template.
4. The author count. Count the names. Seven or fewer, all listed. Eight or more, the first six, an ellipsis, and the last author.
5. Sentence case in article and book titles. APA 6 capitalizes only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. Generators copy whatever case the publisher's metadata used, which is often Title Case.
6. The ebook version. If you read the book on a Kindle or in another reader app, the version goes in brackets after the title.
7. Retrieval dates. Purdue's APA 6 page says to "only use retrieval dates if the source could change, such as Wikis." A generator that stamps today's date on every web page is adding clutter APA 6 does not ask for.
8. The source type. A report, a webpage, and a journal article take different patterns. If a PDF from an agency came out formatted like a webpage, change the source type and regenerate.

Worked examples: generator output, then the fix

Each case shows what a generator commonly hands you and the corrected APA 6 entry. Every example is taken from a source you can check: Purdue OWL's APA 6 pages, or the ECU library guide.

1. A book with no publisher location

Generated: Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. American Psychological Association. Fixed: Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

The generated version is correct APA 7. For APA 6, add the city and state, then a colon.

2. A translated book

Generated: Laplace, P. S. (1951). A philosophical essay on probabilities. Dover. Fixed: Laplace, P. S. (1951). A philosophical essay on probabilities (F. W. Truscott & F. L. Emory, Trans.). New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1814)

Metadata for older translations often drops the translators and the original date. Both belong in the APA 6 reference: the translators in parentheses after the title, the original date in a closing parenthetical.

3. A later edition

Generated: Helfer, M. E., Kempe, R. S., & Krugman, R. D. (1997). The battered child. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fixed: Helfer, M. E., Kempe, R. S., & Krugman, R. D. (1997). The battered child (5th ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

The edition number sits in parentheses after the title, before the period. If your generator has an edition field, fill it in.

4. A long author list

The ECU library's APA 6 guide shows this reference for an article with more than eight authors:

Owen, A., Dufes, C., Moscatelli, D., Mayes, E., Lovell, J., Katti, K., . . . Stone, V. (2014). The application of nanotechnology in medicine: Treatment and diagnostics. Nanomedicine, 9(9), 1291-1294. doi:10.2217/NNM.14.93

Count the names in what your generator produced. A reference that lists every author, or one that puts "et al." in the reference itself, is not following APA 6. The in-text citation is (Owen et al., 2014) every time.

5. An APA 7 DOI in an APA 6 list

If the rest of your list uses doi:10.2217/NNM.14.93, a reference that ends https://doi.org/10.2217/NNM.14.93 is not wrong under APA 6, but it is inconsistent. Convert all of them one way. The https://doi.org/ form is the safer pick if you might move the paper to APA 7 later, because APA 7 accepts only that form.

6. A web page with a bare URL

Generated: Title of page. https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/ Fixed: Title of page. Retrieved from https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

Add "Retrieved from" before the URL, with no period after the URL. If the page is a wiki or something else that changes, add the retrieval date as well.

7. A Kindle book formatted as print

Generated: Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula. Retrieved from Amazon.com Fixed: Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

APA 6 wants the version in square brackets. APA 7 dropped it, which is why an APA 7 template leaves it out.

8. A chapter cited as the whole book

Generated: Wainrib, B. R. (Ed.). (1992). Gender issues across the life cycle. New York, NY: Springer. Fixed: O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer.

If you used one chapter by its own authors, the chapter authors lead the reference, with the editor after "In". Generators fed an ISBN only know the book, so this fix is always yours to make.

In-text citations in APA 6

The author rules are where APA 6 and APA 7 differ most in the body of the paper. The examples below are from Purdue OWL's archived APA 6 in-text citation page.

Use "and" between names in running text and "&" inside parentheses. In "et al.", "et" takes no period and "al." does. With three or more names, a comma goes before the ampersand, as in the Kernis example.

Check the three-to-five-author row by hand. A tool that gives you one in-text string per source cannot give you the full list the first time and the short form after. You have to write the first instance yourself. When the short form would leave two different sources looking identical (two papers that both shorten to "Kernis et al., 1993"), add names until they differ.

Special cases

No author

Move the title to the author position in the reference. In text, use the title, in quotation marks for an article or web page and in italics for a book or report: ("Using Citations," 2001).

No page numbers for a quotation

Use the paragraph number with "para." in place of "p.", plus a section heading if the page has them: (Purdue OWL, 2010, "Mission," para. 1).

Two authors with the same surname

Add initials to tell them apart in text: (E. Johnson, 2001; L. Johnson, 1998).

Several works in one parenthesis

Order them as they appear in the reference list, alphabetically, separated by semicolons: (Berndt, 2002; Harlow, 1983). Our guide to reference list order covers the alphabetizing rules, which are the same in both editions for most entries.

Personal communication

Emails, interviews you conducted, and conversations get an in-text citation only, with no reference list entry: (E. Robbins, personal communication, January 4, 2001).

A source you read about in another source

Cite the source you actually read and name the original in text: Allport's diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003). ECU's guide asks you to use this "sparingly" and "only if the original (primary) source is unavailable."

Moving a reference list between editions

Sometimes the job is conversion: a thesis chapter written under APA 6 has to become a journal article in APA 7, or an APA 7 paper has to go to a journal that still runs APA 6. Regenerating every entry in the other edition is the cleanest route if you still have the DOIs and ISBNs. If you only have the finished list, convert by pattern and leave proofreading for last.

APA 6 to APA 7:

• Search for : after a city and state in book entries, and delete the location.
• Search for doi: and replace it with https://doi.org/.
• Search for Retrieved from and delete it, unless the entry also has a retrieval date.
• Delete ebook versions in square brackets.
• For eight or more authors, go back to the source and write out every name up to 20. The six-names-and-ellipsis entry does not hold enough information to rebuild the APA 7 version, so do not guess the missing names.
• In the text, shorten every first citation of a three-to-five-author source to "et al."

APA 7 to APA 6:

• Add the publisher location to every book. This needs the book in hand or its catalog record.
• Add "Retrieved from" before web URLs.
• Cut author lists longer than seven to six, an ellipsis, and the last author.
• Write out all names in the first citation of each three-to-five-author source.

For formatting the page itself, the title page and running head rules changed as well. Our APA 7 paper format guide covers the current version. For APA 6, Purdue's archived general format page gives the title page header as "Running head: TITLE OF YOUR PAPER," says pages after the title page carry the title alone, and caps the running head at 50 characters including spaces and punctuation.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Generating in APA 7 by default. The output looks right until someone notices the missing city. Choose the APA 6 style before you paste anything.
• Mixing references from two tools. One tool writes doi:, the other writes https://doi.org/, and one quietly runs APA 7. Generate the whole list in one place, or run check 2 and check 3 across the whole list at the end.
• Trusting the publisher's capitalization. Article titles arrive in Title Case from journal metadata. APA 6 uses sentence case for article and book titles and keeps Title Case for journal names.
• Leaving "et al." in a reference entry. APA 6 uses "et al." only in text. The reference names up to seven authors, or six plus the last.
• Using the short form on the first citation of a three-author paper. That is the APA 7 rule. APA 6 lists all three to five names the first time.
• Adding retrieval dates everywhere. APA 6 reserves them for content that changes.

Quick-reference table