APA Citation Guide (7th edition) : No Author, No Date etc.

No Author

No Date

No Page Numbers

No Title 

No Database Name

If no author or creator is provided, start the citation with the title/name of the item you are citing instead. Follow the title/name of the item with the date of publication, and the continue with other citation details.

Note: an author/creator won't necessarily be a person's name. It may be an organization or corporation, for example Health Canada or a username on a site such a YouTube.

In-Text

If no author or creator is provided, use a shortened version of the title where you'd normally put the author's last name. 

If you're citing something which is part of a bigger work, like an article from a magazine, newspaper, journal or encyclopedia, or chapter or short story from a book, put the shortened title in quotation marks in your in-text citation. 

Example, paraphrasing: ("A few words", 2024) 

If you're citing an entire work, like a book, website, video, etc., italicize the shortened title in your in-text citation

Example, 'paraphrasing: (A few words, 2024)

Anonymous

If and only if an item is signed as being created by Anonymous, use "Anonymous" where you'd normally put the author's name.

Alphabetical Order in References List

When putting works in alphabetical order, ignore initial articles such as "the", "a", or "an". For example the title The best of Canada would be alphabetized as if it started with the word best instead of the word The

If the title begins with a number, alphabetize it as if the number was spelled out. For example the title 5 ways to succeed in business would be alphabetized under F as if it had started with the word Five.

If no date is provided, use the initials n.d. where you would normally put the date.

Also use the initials n.d. if the date of content is difficult to determine, such as on a Wikipedia page.

Page numbers may not be provided for some items, such as online materials. If this is the case:

References List

If a citation would normally include page numbers but none are provided, skip the page numbers in the citation.

In-Text Citation - Quoting Directly

When quoting directly in the text of your paper, you would normally include page numbers if they were given. If there are no page numbers given:

• Indicate the paragraph number instead of the page number with the word "para." before it. For example: (Makhubu, 2021, para. 2)
• If there are headings, give the name of the heading, followed by the word "section" and the number of the paragraph within the section it is from. For example: (Raemy, 2024, Physical Demands and Stress section, para. 1-2)
• If there is only one paragraph, provide the author's last name and the year and omit the page number

Occasionally an item may not have a title. If you are citing something with no identified title, write a description of the item placed in square brackets. Put this description in brackets where you'd normally put the title.

If you find an article through the search bar on the main library page, you might be unsure which database the article is from, because this searches across many different databases.

You can find the name of the database a few ways:

Method 1. You can find the name of the database when you have done a search for the article, and are on the results list. Find the name of the article that you are looking for, and look just below the title. The database name will be next to the author's name and publication information.

Method 2. You can also find the name of the database when you are in the record for the article (a page with a description of the article, as well as other useful information). To get to the record from the results list, click on the title of the article. At the top of the page, just below the title, the database name will be listed.

In the examples above, the name of the database is Directory of Open Access Journals.