Vancouver style
How to cite a newspaper article in Vancouver style
News sources need a full date rather than just a year, and the online version of an article rarely carries the page numbers the print version had.
THE FORMAT
A newspaper article in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Author AA. Title of the article. Newspaper Name. Year Mon DD;Sect. A:## (col. #).
4. Marchetti C. Hospitals ration nurses as agency costs climb. The Daily Standard. 2025 Jan 22;Sect. A:1 (col. 3).
Agency staffing costs have roughly doubled at three of the region’s four trusts.⁴
In prose: Reporting in the national press⁴ put agency spending at twice its 2019 level.
5. Marchetti C. Hospitals ration nurses as agency costs climb. The Daily Standard [Internet]. 2025 Jan 22 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. Available from: https://www.dailystandard.com/health/agency-nursing-costs
In text: Agency staffing costs have roughly doubled at three of the region’s four trusts.⁵
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 Vancouver needs from a newspaper article
Elements to collect
- Journalist’s name
- Full date of publication — year, month, and day
- Headline of the article
- Name of the newspaper
- Page number for a print article, or the URL for an online one
Rules specific to this entry
- A newspaper needs a full date — “2025 Jan 22” — where a journal usually needs only the year. The section, page, and column follow the semicolon: “Sect. A:1 (col. 3)”.
- The column number is a genuine Citing Medicine element rather than decoration. Keep it when the print edition has columns and drop it without comment when it does not.
- The newspaper name is given in full, is not abbreviated, and is not italicized. Unlike a journal, it has no NLM Catalog abbreviation to look up, so do not invent one.
- Where several editions run different copy, name the edition after the title — “The Daily Standard (Natl Ed)” — because page and column numbers differ between editions.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a newspaper article: Journalist’s name; Full date of publication — year, month, and day; Headline of the article; Name of the newspaper.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Author AA. Title of the article. Newspaper Name. Year Mon DD;Sect. A:## (col. #).
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Agency staffing costs have roughly doubled at three of the region’s four trusts.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as Reporting in the national press⁴ put agency spending at twice its 2019 level..
Check it against the exceptions
A newspaper needs a full date — “2025 Jan 22” — where a journal usually needs only the year. The section, page, and column follow the semicolon: “Sect. A:1 (col. 3)”.
Vancouver RULES
The conventions behind every Vancouver entry
Citing Medicine (NLM), 2nd ed. — the reference standard behind Vancouver 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 Vancouver entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Vancouver style guide.
The same newspaper article in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and newspaper articles
What if the newspaper article has no author?
Start the entry with the title and keep the number you already assigned it. A numeric references never re-sorts for a missing author, so the entry stays exactly where it is.
What do I need before I can cite a newspaper article?
Journalist’s name, Full date of publication — year, month, and day, Headline of the article, and the rest of the elements listed above. News sources need a full date rather than just a year, and the online version of an article rarely carries the page numbers the print version had.
Is there anything unusual about a newspaper article in Vancouver?
A newspaper needs a full date — “2025 Jan 22” — where a journal usually needs only the year. The section, page, and column follow the semicolon: “Sect. A:1 (col. 3)”.
What else catches people out here?
The column number is a genuine Citing Medicine element rather than decoration. Keep it when the print edition has columns and drop it without comment when it does not.
Can I reformat this newspaper article 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.
