APA 7th edition
How to cite a chapter in an edited book in APA 7th edition
A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
THE FORMAT
A chapter in an edited book in APA, at a glance
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the chapter. In E. E. Editor & F. F. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher.
Ibarra, S. (2020). Hedging as a politeness strategy in research articles. In L. R. Marchetti & K. Owusu (Eds.), Rethinking peer review (pp. 112–134). Fenmore University Press.
(Ibarra, 2020)
In prose: Ibarra (2020) reads the hedge as a concession to reviewers rather than a sign of uncertainty.
Ibarra, S., & Novak, P. (2020). Hedging as a politeness strategy in research articles. In L. R. Marchetti & K. Owusu (Eds.), Rethinking peer review (2nd ed., pp. 112–134). Fenmore University Press.
In text: (Ibarra & Novak, 2020)
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the references builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What APA needs from a chapter in an edited book
Elements to collect
- Chapter author or authors
- Year of publication
- Chapter title
- Editor or editors of the whole book
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Rules specific to this entry
- Only the chapter author is inverted. Editors keep normal order — initials first, surname last — because they sit inside the reference rather than at its head.
- The chapter title is plain sentence case with no quotation marks; the book title is italicized. Use (Ed.) for one editor and (Eds.) for two or more, followed by a comma.
- The page range takes pp. inside the parentheses after the book title and is not italicized. Give the range for the whole chapter, not just the pages you used.
- Cite the chapter author in the text, never the book editors. Readers looking for the argument need the person who made it.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element APA needs for a chapter in an edited book: Chapter author or authors; Year of publication; Chapter title; Editor or editors of the whole book.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the APA order: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the chapter. In E. E. Editor & F. F. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Ibarra, 2020) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Ibarra (2020) reads the hedge as a concession to reviewers rather than a sign of uncertainty..
Check it against the exceptions
Only the chapter author is inverted. Editors keep normal order — initials first, surname last — because they sit inside the reference rather than at its head.
APA RULES
The conventions behind every APA entry
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the references is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the references is sorted, and where APA entries most often go wrong — are collected on the APA 7th edition guide.
The same chapter in an edited book in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about APA and book chapters
What if the chapter in an edited book has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a chapter in an edited book?
Chapter author or authors, Year of publication, Chapter title, and the rest of the elements listed above. A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
Is there anything unusual about a chapter in an edited book in APA?
Only the chapter author is inverted. Editors keep normal order — initials first, surname last — because they sit inside the reference rather than at its head.
What else catches people out here?
The chapter title is plain sentence case with no quotation marks; the book title is italicized. Use (Ed.) for one editor and (Eds.) for two or more, followed by a comma.
Can I reformat this chapter in an edited book in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole references at once.
