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APA Citation Style, 7th edition: Figures

A guide to help users create citations using APA (American Psychological Association) style, 7th edition.

About Citing Sources

For each type of source in this guide, both the general form and an example will be provided.

The following format will be used:

In-Text Citation (Paraphrase) - entry that appears in the body of your paper when you express the ideas of a researcher or author using your own words.  For more tips on paraphrasing check out The OWL at Purdue.

In-Text Citation (Quotation) - entry that appears in the body of your paper after a direct quote.

References - entry that appears at the end of your paper.

Information on citing and several of the examples were drawn from the APA Manual (6th ed.).

Numbers in parentheses refer to specific pages in the manual.

Figures

When you use a figure in your paper that has been adapted or copied directly from another source, you need to reference the original source.  This reference appears as a caption underneath the figure that you copied or adapted for your paper.

Any image that is reproduced from another source also needs to come with copyright permission; it is not enough just to cite the source.

Hints:

  • Number figures consecutively throughout your paper.
  • Double-space the caption that appears under a figure.

 

General Format 1 (Figure from a Book):

     Caption under Figure
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from Book Title (page number), by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname,
     Year, Publisher. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder.
     Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.

 

Example 1 (Figure from a Book):

 

     Caption under Figure
     Figure 1. Short-term memory test involving pictures. Reprinted from Short-term Memory
     Loss (p. 73), by K. M. Pike, 2008, Mackerlin Press. Copyright  2008 by
     the Association for Memory Research. Reprinted with permission.

 

General Format 2 (Figure from a Journal Article):

 

     Caption under Figure
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from “Title of Article,” by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, Journal Title,
     Volume(issue), page number. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder.
     Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.

 

Example 2 (Figure from a Journal Article)
 
     Caption under Figure
     Figure 1. Schematic drawings of a bird's eye view of the table (a) and the test phase of
     the choice task (b). Numbers represent the dimensions in centimeters. Adapted from
     "Visual Experience Enhances Infants' Use of Task-Relevant Information in an Action
     Task," by S.-h. Wang and L. Kohne, 2007, Developmental Psychology, 43, p. 1515.
     Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association.

 

General Format 3 (Figure from a Website):

 

     Caption under Figure
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from Title of Website, by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, URL. Copyright [year] by the Name of Copyright Holder. Reprinted [or adapted]
     with permission.

 

Example 3 (Figure from a Website):

 

     Caption under Figure
     Figure 1. An example of the cobra yoga position. Reprinted from List of Yoga Postures,
     In Wikipedia, n.d., Retrieved October 28, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
     /List_of_yoga_postures. Copyright 2007 by Joseph Renger. Reprinted with permission.