Below is an electronic journal article citation from a library database formatted in APA Style; we will take it one element at a time as we rebuild it, looking at each individual element of the citation (you'll see one major difference compared to a print journal citation).  

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36(11), 933-951. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.832117

Monaghan, R.

• Note first that with each author's name (whether you have one or multiple authors), you invert the order, and put the last name first, followed by a comma, and then by THE INITIALS ONLY of the first and middle names. (Unlike some other styles, APA Style does NOT include the full first and middle names, instead only the first initials of each.)
• Each first and middle initial is followed by a period.
• Since there is only one author in this case, a period follows the initial of the author's first name (there is no middle initial).
• This is the end of the author section of the citation.

Now move on to the next section to look at how to format the year of publication.

Let's look now at the publication date, and how that is handled in the APA citation:

Monaghan, R. (2013).

• Note the year of publication, 2013, is enclosed in parentheses, and is followed by a period. (Each element in APA citations is followed by a period).

Now go to the next section to see how the title of the article is formatted in APA style.

Now let's look at the article title:

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom.  

• Notice two things about the title of this article: 
  • As we saw already for the book title in 6A, the first word is capitalized in the both the article title (before the colon), Not, and in the subtitle (after the colon), Animal; all other words in both are lower case, EXCEPT for United Kingdom in the subtitle (that is because "United Kingdom" is a proper noun and should be capitalized no matter where it appears in the citation).  Again as illustrated in 6A, the book citation example, this is called "sentence capitalization." 
  • The article title is not enclosed in quote marks (" "), unlike some other styles such as MLA.  Like all other elements in APA style, it is also followed by a period. 

Now scroll down to the next section to see how the title of the journal in which this article appears is formatted.​

Now we'll take a look at the journal title (including the volume and issue numbers, and page numbers):

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,

Notice 4 things about the the journal title:

• It is in italicized (slanted) print.
• Unlike the article title, which you'll remember uses "sentence" capitalization, the journal title is instead capitalized using "headline" capitalization (meaning that every important word--often words of four letters or more--are capitalized). 
• Also note that this journal uses the ampersand (&) symbol in its official name instead of the word "and," so you should use it also in the citation (if instead the journal title used "and" spelled out rather than the ampersand, then you would spell it out in the citation). 
• Terrorism, the last word in the journal title, is followed by a comma, not a period.  This is because the rest of the information about that journal (the volume and issue numbers, plus page numbers), are considered part of that journal title element. 

Scroll to the next section to learn about the volume and issue numbers, and what they mean.

Let's look now at the volume number, 36, and the issue number, 11:

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36(11), 

• Notice that the volume number, 36, is in italicized (slanted) print, just like the journal name.  The volume number always corresponds to the year the journal is published, which in this case is 2013.
• Note also that the issue number, in this case, 11, corresponds to the month, or month and day that this particular issue of the journal is published: 
  • It is enclosed in parentheses ( ),
  • It is NOT italicized, 
  • There is NO SPACE between the volume number and the parentheses that surround the issue number, and
  • The issue number is followed by a comma (there is still page info to come as part of this element; more about that in the next section).

Now let's go to the next section to learn about formatting the page numbers.

Now let's take a look at how to format the page numbers on which this article in the issue of this journal appear:

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36(11), 933-951. 

Note that when formatting page numbers for your References list in APA Style, you

• Do not include the abbreviations "p." or "pp" before the numerals.
• The element ends with a period (therefore closing the entire journal information element).

​If this were a print article or an electronic database article without a DOI number that we were citing, you would now be finished.  But since it was published in electronic format and has a DOI number, you have one more step.  Scroll down to the next section to learn what that is...

Many articles in electronic format are assigned a unique DOI number to make it easier to find online (DOI stands for "Digital Object Identifier").  If your e-article has a DOI number, you must include it in your citation.  Our example article does have a DOI:

Monaghan, R. (2013). Not quite terrorism: Animal rights extremism in the United Kingdom. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36(11), 933-951. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.832117

• Note that the DOI in our example is actually a link (signified by the "https://" in front of it).  Some DOI numbers (usually with older articles) are not formatted with the link, and they would instead look like this in a citation:  doi:10.1080/1057610X.2013.832117
  • In APA 7th edition, ALL DOI numbers must be represented as a link (like in the citation above).  If your article has an older, non-link version of the DOI, do the following to format it into a link:
    • ​Remove the "doi:" and replace with https://doi.org" in front of the actual numerals.
  • ​Also note that there are no spaces between any of the elements in the DOI number/link.
• In addition, there is NO PERIOD following a DOI number, because it interferes with retrieval.
• The easiest way to type your DOI number without error is to copy and paste it.

Now that you are comfortable with creating Reference page citations for both books and articles, in both print and electronic format, we will turn to how to create the corresponding in-text citations (the shortcuts in your paper that refer to these longer, complete reference citations), in Step 7.  Click on Step 7 (below right or in the left sidebar) now.